How can companies transform their structure to be more agile and adapt to change?
Many businesses and organisations go wrong with transformation at an early stage. They think transformation means a new website or new technology. In reality, it’s considering how the business operates and delivers value to customers, first and foremost.
If you look at the most successful businesses today, many of them are innovating constantly and can adapt rapidly to change. This is in contrast to the organisations of old that budget and scope portfolios for three or five year periods, with arrays of programmes, projects and business cases, often locked in despite things changing around them.
To be more agile and adaptive usually means things like looking at your organisation according to value streams, adopting agile portfolio management, having clear objectives and key results at the top that align the whole organisation, funding capacity rather than programmes and projects, bringing your business and engineering closer together in fusion teams, but at the same time not trying to do too much at once!
This sort of structure helps organisations to be extremely agile. Rather than there being one big hierarchy, you have networks of teams that operate independently but according to coherent strategic objectives, and this lends itself very well to experimentation. Each team can plan and do things that apply just to their part of the organisation, so you can execute much more quickly.
I think the priority is finding how your organisation can become more nimble, and also how you make it safe for people to fail. It’s important that people are constantly iterating and learning, and that’s something to be encouraged.
To be more agile and adaptive usually means things like looking at your organisation according to value streams, adopting agile portfolio management, having clear objectives and key results at the top that align the whole organisation.
What policies and processes can and should be implemented to help employees keep up with the pace of change?
We see a lot of change fatigue in the work that we do, and I think that’s tied to the expectations that are set around this being the change that will fix everything, when we should be honest that change comes in wave after wave. That sets expectations and we can help people become more resilient to it. Change is sometimes associated with consulting and as something that someone comes in and does “to” you. People don’t want to be told how to do their job. When that happens over and over, you get change fatigue and resistance.
Where we’ve had a lot of success is being a catalyst that helps people change. We might give them pointers or stitch things together, but it’s working with teams rather than doing it to them, or telling people how to do a job.
It’s also important to have honest conversations with clients upfront. We’ve all seen those transformation projects that we’re told are going to achieve all these brilliant things and fix all sorts of issues, and it doesn’t quite work out. We have to change our language and stop over-promising. Rather than saying, “This project will fix everything,” we need to say, “This tool is great but it won’t solve all the problems.” I prefer to make things real, and make sure there’s a human element alongside the technology.
We have to change our language and stop over-promising. Rather than saying, “This project will fix everything,” we need to say, “This tool is great but it won’t solve all the problems.”
What role do you think AI and machine learning will play in helping organisations become more efficient in accelerating digital transformation?
We have all heard that artificial intelligence is going to take all of our jobs. But the biggest expenditure in AI is on people. That tells you something.
In the near term, I think AI will help us to make better decisions. Decision support is important, as people, data and AI come together.
I think AI will help us to make better decisions.
Decision support is important,
as people, data and AI come together.
The reason people are so important is because you can have the best technology and find the best ‘mathematical’ answer, but that won’t ever replicate the human gut feeling element of decision making. You don’t buy a house or a car based purely on numbers, it’s also about ‘gut feel’. Technology will enhance our ability to interact with data to get that ‘gut feel’.
HENRY MONELLE
Associate Director, Alchemmy
How has the pandemic influenced the way you deliver your services?
In some respects, a lot of the change had already happened in our business. We already had processes that gave us good remote contact with clients and stakeholders and partners. We have an office culture that supports collaboration even if you’re not in the office, with video and virtual calls.
We have an office culture that supports collaboration
even if you’re not in the office, with video and virtual calls.
We have a lot of global clients, so we’ve been doing this as a matter of course. The pandemic has forced that to be everywhere, but we could adapt quite quickly.
GARY WATTS
Associate Director, Alchemmy
Alchemmy is an award-winning management consultancy helping our clients, our people, and our partners to grow and thrive. Our team of platform-enabled consultants work outside-in and future-back, combining data and design to deliver sustainable change. With deep expertise in retail, consumer products, transportation and public sector, we help our clients to address their biggest growth, operational improvement, digital & data, and change challenges.