Almost everything in our culture today has become about
change - whether it is our houses, our gardens, lifestyles or
appearances - so it is not surprising that organisations and
businesses find themselves facing major pressures to change
the way they deliver their services. Whatever drives it
- technology, politics, security, economics or social
attitudes - change is unavoidable.
4-consulting director, Ros
Southcott, explores an approach to transformational change
which enables organisations to deliver the "grand
vision".
Over the last year or so, 4-consulting has worked with a
number of organisations to help them improve their
performance. These organisations faced major pressures from
external sources forcing them to change the way in which they
deliver their services. Sometimes the pressure was driven by
legislation or the need to reduce the operating cost base. In
other cases, customers and external stakeholders were looking
for improvements in capacity or service levels.
The starting point for any transformational change has to
be the "vision" for the future. This is usually at
the heart of the corporate plan which describes the long-term
goals and aspirations for the organisation, the goods and
services which it will deliver to its customers and
stakeholders and the metrics by which the organisation success
can then measured (ie key performance indicators). This vision must be
supported by the organisational structure required to deliver
these goods and services. Finally, there are the systems and
business processes required to support the new-look
organisation.
In the early 1980s, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman
described organisations as more than structures. They
developed the 7-S model in which the corporate plan,
organisational structure and systems and business processes
are described as Strategy, Structures and Systems. These
elements are described as "hard" as they are
feasible and readily identifiable. There are also
"soft" organisational elements, namely Staff, Skills
and Style. These are difficult to describe because of the
changing nature of capabilities, values and culture within the
organisation. "Soft" elements are difficult to plan
or influence from a management point of view because they are
influenced by the people working in the organisation. Despite
this, "soft" elements often have great impact on the
"hard" elements of an organisation. In successful
organisations, the "hard" and "soft"
elements share common values or fundamental ideas around which
a business is built. They must be simply articulated and have
great meaning for the people in the organisation.
Successful transformational change demands the integration
of the seven key elements.
Fig. 1 The 7-S model based
on Peters and Waterman 1980 and adapted from RT Pascale,
1991
We have found that the complexity of the changes involved
may cause the transformation project to falter or not deliver
its full range of benefits because:
Another common mistake is that organisations tend to
concentrate on the hard elements of strategy, structures and
systems, and neglect the softer aspects, ie the hearts
and minds. This seems to be due largely to the relative
ease with which the "hard" elements of
transformation of change can be converted into
projects with clear deliverables, milestones and measured benefits. However, a successful transformational change
programme has to address all seven elements with the shared
values at the centre. Organisations have to ensure that the
skills and people development programmes are not neglected in
the change process. One of the hardest things is to develop a
suitable management culture which is about what managers do
with their time, their thinking, their leadership and their
treatment of the people that work in the organisation.
Our
approach to the "soft" elements of transformational
change is described in Figure 2:
Fig. 2. 4-consulting
Transformation Model
Once the "grand vision" has been
established, we identify the skills and competences that the
new organisation will need and agree the metrics for plotting
the progress of the change, then map the current culture of
the organisation. This mapping exercise produces the
programme of change activity that has to be carried out over
the coming months. Critical to the success of this
activity are:
