Do you need to transition OR transform your business?
That is the right question!
I often hear a transition is the process of going from stage A to stage B. The transition being the journey whereas transformation is the output of that journey. Do you adhere to this? I prefer not to play semantics! I believe we need more simple and more distinctive definitions to steer an organization’s growth.
Organizations transit to become better. And they transform to become different.
Both transition and transformation are journeys and it’s crucial to be able to clearly distinguish both. Indeed, it’s hard for any organization to become better and to become different at the same time. Right? Both serve the same growth objective, but the dynamics are different.
A few years ago John inherited from his uncle Sam a small manufacturing company of textile accessories. He left his well-payed banking job to take on the challenge. John was working hard together with his small team of loyal employees to continue to please the resellers network built over the years by uncle Sam. But, John also wanted to modernize the production atelier and grow sales. He has been preaching omni-channel sales to his former banking customers for years. So, John hired Suzanne. A young and ambitious digital marketeer to develop an on-line business.
The first months the new channel was generating almost no incremental business. John started to get a little nervous but Suzanne kept her enthusiasm and multiplied the initiatives to grow traffic on their e-commerce site. And, one day, a very famous talk show host was wearing one of their pretty scarfs. Immediately site traffic was rocketing and John saw sales growing rapidly week after week. But, the heaven’s gift turned out to quickly introduce some operational challenges John had not anticipated. Would production and expedition be able to follow?
Last year John had luckily bought a new machine. He was happy to finally see the additional production capacity used. But, the expeditions could not follow the pace. John hired a new resource rapidly. He was paying over hours. He also introduced 2 shifts to expedite still in late evenings. This introduced communication short comes at first and the late shift turned out of packaging materials. As a response, Suzanne proposed to introduce some visuals to further support expediting. Etc…
John, Suzanne and the team have been very reactive and they managed to increase the output rapidly and significantly. But, did they go through a transformation? No! They did more of the same and they became better at it. Transition is all about process optimizations! But, you cannot endless increase the performance of teams by doing more of the same. At a point of time you need to start doing things differently!
Continuous improvement is a finite game. Trust there will always be a competitor to make you realize this.
John became very soon tired of being reactive. He has been following the introduction of 3D printing in numerous industry sectors. So, as an early believer of 3D printing for textile, he decided to sign a partnership agreement with a 3D printing services company to start develop software for experimenting 3D printing with his production yarns. What if a customer could enter a store, design her own scarf and leave the store a few minutes later with her scarf around the neck? This would be a new customer experience for sure. And his expedition problems are gone! And the environment would also benefit from the elimination of transport and textile waste generated during production. One day he might envision to abandon even the production of yarns… His organization would then have become totally different.
You need regularly to embrace new technologies to continue to support your growth. Transformation is all about process innovation!
If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will. (Steve Jobs)
So, transitions and transformations follow different dynamics and come in what I call alternating performance cycles. Always! By alternating optimization and innovation you can stay ahead of competition in the long run. You’ve turned finite continuous improvements into an infinite game of performance cycles.
And these performance cycles have two main characteristics:
First, the more you, your teams and your company grow, the more these performance cycles get longer and more complex. Leaving you and your teams with bigger challenges to address: What gets part of coming cycle scope? How much growth do we anticipate in next cycle? What level of change is the organization ready to undergo in coming months and years? Is the timing OK for some disruption?
The timing for disruption is never right! And people are by nature avert to change. Did you encounter for all the risks? Probably not.
Only one thing you have to take for granted: these performance cycles cannot come to an end. Never! This is the only way for your organization to stay competitive and relevant. If you don’t jump… someone else will for sure.
John decided the time was right for his organization to make the jump to the next level. And he was excited about it.
Secondly, and more importantly even, is to understand and accept that process performance will temporarily drop during transformation phases. Indeed, the teams need to get acquainted to new technology. They need to get trained on the new processes that were introduced by the new technology. They need to get familiar with a different working environment. So, performance cycles need to be well prepared!
John was fully aware that 3D printing would introduce changes to the texture of his yarns with temporary impacts on the production levels. But, he had a plan to minimize the shortfall.
Only when everyone adopted the new normal, teams will start again optimizing their performance and transition to the next level onto the organization’s growth-path.
Transformations start when transitions end. Anticipate transitions to end. And don’t fail to transform.
