How To Manage Business Transformation…And, Keep Your Sanity

Transforming a business is a lot like changing the tires on a truck while it is slamming down the highway at 90 miles an hour. The business world doesn't stop just because you need to optimize your operations. No, your business still needs to be able to quickly respond to customer demands with high quality service delivery even when it's in the midst of great transformation.

In fact, your business must be positioned to implement new capabilities and modify operations on a dime, regardless of what is going on behind the scenes. But, during times of significant change, it is not unusual for work (particularly that which crosses organizational boundaries) to get "hung-up" by resource constraints and political red tape. After all, no one wants to be the one that winds up with the short end of the stick!

Clearly, organizing work into a portfolio of projects and programs reduces the obstacles to quick response by offering a different perspective on the way transformation results are achieved. Resource issues and ownership challenges are resolved during the project planning stage, when the executive leadership is present and involved in priority-setting and project sourcing. Done right, transformation project teams will be cross-functional in structure and share common "team-based" goals.

But, there are implications for driving change in this way, including:

1. An awareness program will be necessaryto expose all of the firm's personnel to this new way of organizing and performing transformation work within the business.