Do all Transformation experts think alike?

In its glory days, the Roman Empire was responsible for creating an extensive network of thoroughfares throughout the European continent, from Britain to Turkey, interconnecting its 113 provinces by means of 373 routes that were more than 80 thousand kilometres long. Today, some of Europe's major highways exist on these ancient Roman roads. 

The well-known saying “all roads lead to Rome” seems to be true, at least, that’s what Moovel Lab, a team from Stuttgart dedicated to urban mobility research, points out. Titled "Roads to Rome," the project has mapped out over-land routes across Europe that converge to the city.

From a grid of 26,503,452 square kilometres covering all of Europe, the researchers defined 486,713 starting points that were superimposed on the continent's street map. Then an algorithm was developed for the project that calculated the shortest route between each of the points and the Italian capital. 

The resulting cartography reveals a route map that, in fact, does lead to Rome!  Well, at least if the road was important. The logic of how an empire works isn’t so different to a modern country. The Romans weren’t that different to us; they were just trying to minimise routes to save time and to retain control.

In modern day parlance, the phrase “all roads lead to Rome” is taken to mean that there are many different ways of reaching a certain goal and that all choices, methods or actions eventually lead to the same result. 

Do they? You might ask.

So, it set me thinking about some of the research into failures in transformation programmes and what approaches various experts are extolling.

As we surely know by now, 70% of business transformations fail to achieve their original ambitions.  Indeed, a recent study report from global strategy and management firm Boston Consulting Group found that only one third of local corporate digital transformation programmes could be considered a success, with targets met or succeeded and sustainable change created. On the flip-side, 20 percent of such projects were deemed outright failures, with less than half of the targets met, and no sustainable change created. Globally, that figure pushes out to more than a quarter.

With such dire figures and corresponding poor return on investment, a lot of organisations turn to the big consultancies. They have a fear that the same will happen to them. Leaders fear their own personal jobs might be at risk if they fail and so having their hand held by one of these trusted organisations may be seen to help mitigate the risk, show they’re doing the right thing and give people more belief.

In some ways, transformations are viewed as being very complex, requiring a correspondingly complex and detailed approach. Others though, view transformations as relatively simple, programmes that become complex at their peril, and truly succeed only when they are simplified, and you win the hearts and the minds of the people. 

So how do some of the consultancies and researchers approach transformations? Well, we read a lot about different strategies they propose are the right ones to adopt.

Bain & Co, for example, talk at length about six practices their research has shown are key to successful programmes.  Treating transformations as a continuous process is at the forefront here taking aim at the previous “unfreeze-change-refreeze” model. That model made sense when most business transformations were transitionary, it’s not well suited to deliver a major change in today’s highly dynamic environment. As we can probably all see, most organisations are likely to be in a state of constant transformation now, given the environment we are currently operating in.

Here, they also talk about building transformation into an organisation’s operating rhythm; explicitly managing organisational energy, an argument for focus and simplicity; using aspirations, not just targets, to stretch management thinking; driving change from the middle out; and accessing substantial external capital from the start.  The last point being that transformation is expensive. Whether you are a company or a government department, it seems to be quite a common theme that transformations are underfunded and often funded through cost saving measures. As you would expect, this typically falls short.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have themselves carried out a lot of research to try to identify key factors that contribute to the success of transformation programmes. In one such piece of research, they surveyed 825 senior executives from around the world, along with analysing data from 70 projects that it had itself worked on.  They have also concluded there are six factors which, if addressed in combination, are likely to deliver the greatest chances for success. These include an integrated strategy with clear transformation goals; leadership commitment from CEO through middle management; deploying high calibre talent; an agile governance mindset that drives broader adoption; effective monitoring of progress towards defined outcomes; and investments in a business lead technology and data platform.

As you can see from just these two examples, there is some crossover but with each taking aim at points the other one doesn’t consider.  Were we to incorporate thoughts from PWC, Deloitte, Accenture etc, no doubt we would get a few other aspects that they each believe are important.

No wonder organisations struggle to make sense of things and find it difficult to work out which is the right path.

At risk of confusing matters further, I’m going to refer to a different piece of research, one which ties in with a common theme in several of our transformation newsletters.

This one relates to people and again pulls on some research from Bain and Co, but research that has been impressed on us consistently when engaging with our own cohort of the top transformation leaders.  These are people who are very much in the 30% successful as opposed to the 70% failure category.

According to its survey of over 400 executives and senior leaders, the strongest predictor of a transformation’s success is how well the organisation retains, develops, and acquires the right talent and capabilities to pull it off.  They subsequently identified three common mistakes that seem pivotal in transformations; failure to focus on the critical roles, noting that the wrong people often end up in critical seats, which is disastrous when considering 90% of the results of any transformation are created by less than 5% of roles; relying on too shallow a talent pool, in which “star players” are often overloaded, which sets them up for failure, and a Chief Transformation Officer not being present (a CTO typically achieves 24% more value); and poor preparation for the future, where an organisation’s high performers were often viewed as lacking the capabilities needed to succeed in critical roles, and skills gaps remained unaddressed.

So back to the question.  “Do all roads lead to Rome?”

Well, as per the research by Moovel Lab, they do.  And, indeed, from the research by Bain & Co and Boston Consulting Group, they should do as well.  Some faster than others of course.

But what stands out to us, is the people.  If an organisation retains, develops, and acquires the right talent and capabilities, then it has a far greater chance to pull it off.  Getting the people right is without doubt the strongest predictor of a transformation’s likely success.