With a background in leading product development and engineering teams, I’ve learned that successful transformations require deliberate planning and execution. This guide outlines eight key considerations to help leaders drive meaningful change.
- Establish Purpose
Why change? The more people understand and buy into the need for change, the greater the momentum for a successful transformation
- Successful change is a team sport
Change-agent heroes can be very lonely. Invest in creating a winning coalition.
Effective transformational leaders need creativity, need to understand system thinking, need passion about working with people and the ability learning from difficult circumstances.
- Define the baseline
Know where you are coming from particularly in terms of the metrics that you want to work on and improve.
- Look below the surface
Avoid curing only symptoms. Frequently, what is visible on the surface may not tell the full story or give enough insight into understanding the root cause of your problems. It’s important to analyze and understand sufficiently what needs to be fixed so that the intended and sustainable change will happen.
However, also bear on mind not to get stuck with analysis paralysis.
- Understand the system
Be mindful that often things to change depend on each other.
E.g., troubled teams rarely follow mature processes, produce great products, built with compelling design and architecture. So, if you want to se one particular outcome, you may need to consider other changes as prerequisites.
I found the B-A-P-O principle (Business à architecture à process à organization structure) useful that suggests the following:
Start with the intended business outcome. Next, define the architecture and product design that supports this goal. Then, establish the processes needed to execute. Finally, organize teams to implement the plan.
- Think big!
… but start small!
Having a clear picture on mind of where you want to go and being able to express a compelling vision inspiring the people implementing the change can be tremendously helpful. However, the big picture may miss the view of critical details or rely on unrealistic assumptions. Hence, encourage running small experiments, run such experiment frequently, carefully evaluate their results – and learn from them by utilizing “inspect-and-adapt” cycles for the transformation itself.
- Show progress
Establish key metrics and track the progress – or failure – to encourage continued focus on the change
Seek to identify and nurture developing lighthouse(s) – such as teams, locations, functions – for change
Celebrate success, encourage further engagement.
- Strive to improve something – always!
Seek leaving the organization, product, engineering teams – and as result the business – in a better state than what I found upon joining.
Transformations are complex but rewarding. By focusing on these eight principles, leaders can guide their teams through meaningful and sustainable change.
