Mindsets to Lead Business Transformation

Everyone in your team looks to you for direction and vision. You are the leader, the visionary. It is completely natural to feel pressure to excel in what you do because the success or failure of your company completely depends on how you lead your team. You have worked your way up the ladder to be a member of the elite C-suite, so how can you make the most of where you are and what you have?

If you already recognise that your company needs transformation, then you have already completed the first step of the process. Most of the time, the hardest part is admitting that something needs to be changed. So take heart. You’ve already taken the first step in the right direction.

Regardless of how established your company is, leading a transformation is going to challenge you. A complete transformation requires recalibration of your company’s technical systems, work culture and mindset, as well as interpersonal relationships. You may not know where to begin or how to inspire your team to be on board with your plan for transformation. That’s completely natural. You’re not alone.

After recognising that a transformation is necessary, start by clearly defining your objectives. Take a step back and analyse the current situation of your company. Determine what is working out well and what needs to be changed. Take some time to write down your thoughts so that you can see things in black and white.

The two main objectives for any business transformation are enhancing customer experience and gaining efficiency to improve the cost-to-income ratio.

Since your customers drive your business and yearly profit, you must invest in making sure that your customers are satisfied with your product or service and remain loyal to you. If you can establish loyal customers, you can almost guarantee a continued profit.

The second objective is to fine-tune and recalibrate technical systems within your company so that your employees can become more efficient. This may include creating a more data-driven decision-making process, introducing artificial intelligence and automation, building new employee platforms, and defining other processes and systems that will simplify your organisation. The more efficiently your company functions, the easier it is to invest more time and energy into more complicated aspects of your business. When your employees no longer have to engage in repetitive, mundane tasks, you free them up to tackle those activities which will actually move the needle for your business.

Once you have clearly defined these two main objectives and the direction you want your organisation to take, you must consider the path through which you can attain your goals. Based on your objectives, begin by designing new emerging business models that can direct you towards your vision.

Think about how you can orchestrate an ecosystem within your organisation that will drive growth. Look into establishing new partnerships that may be valuable in accelerating your path to transformation. You would hinder the growth of your company if you try to fix, change, and solve all of your problems on your own. Seek out new relationships that can support your growth and transformation.

Break Down Your Misconceptions

Before embarking on your business transformation, be careful to break down any misconceptions that may hinder your progress. One of the greatest misconceptions is that data strategies and automation are unnecessary. In our ever-advancing technological society, an organisation must prioritise implementing technology in order to be future-ready.

When considering automation, many assume that automating certain processes will ultimately replace jobs. But this is not the reality. A lot of research and trials have demonstrated that we are moving into a future where both machines and humans will collaborate to augment human labour and drive better business outcomes. While it seems like machines can take over almost everything, they can never be human. The ability of a human to combine past experiences, lessons from failure, and envision the future far exceeds any machine. The human touch is and always will be a necessity in every organisation.

Another misconception that your employees may have of the leadership team is that transformation is limited to where money is invested. While money does play an important role, greater transformation can come about even in the absence of sufficient financial resources. With my team, I found that we were able to come up with the best innovative ideas when there were significant constraints. If you’re passionate about innovation and transformation, there’s always a way to embrace your limitations and work around them to bring about transformation.

So the real question that needs to be answered is, “How can we bring about a culture change where our team is empowered and given the responsibility to break silos in order to focus on greater outcomes?” When this shift in mindset happens, no constraint is too great to overcome.

Moreover, your team needs to realize that they have a valuable role to play in the business transformation, regardless of their level of seniority. The motivation of your team will then be stronger if they work for a vision rather than an individual.

A sports retail company called Decathlon has already started to implement a horizontal hierarchical structure. Without a boss, the employees must be committed to work collectively for business growth, transformation, and customer satisfaction. This sets the stage for more collaboration and greater success. The next generation has already been raised with an open mindset and the expectation that their voice matters regardless of their position in an organisation. So, the more you cluster and confine your team to a specific expertise without creating opportunities for cross-functional collaborative work, the more you kill their drive and stifle their strengths.

In order to turn a vision into reality, you’ll need more than just a few passionate people. Everyone needs to roll up their sleeves and go all in. The only way a transformation can happen is if you’re able to get your team equally excited about the vision and feel equally invested in contributing towards it.

In the past, vertical hierarchy defined the structure of most organisations. A vertical hierarchy demonstrated some strength but lots of limits as well. As you can imagine, such structure isn’t the best environment for teamwork and innovation to flourish, because no matter how good your ideas are, the buck stops with one person. While there are still many companies that still observe this hierarchy, future-ready companies implement a collaborative mindset, one that highly values every employee’s thoughts and ideas. This is a horizontal hierarchy.

In a horizontal hierarchy, lots of your employees are playing in the same field. No one is above the other, and every employee’s thoughts, ideas, and actions play a part in working towards the shared vision. Empowered by this ability to take ownership (and equally, accountability), your employees will naturally contribute to establishing the new vision for the organisation. Their motivation will be a great deal more ingrained, and you’ll find them more willing to take initiative to accelerate the transformation.

If your organisation currently adopts a vertical hierarchy, consider changing the structure within to begin the transformation. When you’re able to craft a shared vision and embrace the spirit of collaboration, your team will be motivated to work towards a greater purpose. Implement new learning and development opportunities for your employees to support their growth.

The most effective way to bring about change is to lead by example. If you merely set the vision and expect your team to jump on board, it’s likely that they would be uninspired and feel forced into action. On the other hand, if you involve your team in the vision-planning process and incorporate their thoughts and aspirations, then you are setting yourself up for a greater chance of success.

Start by planning meetings that provide opportunities for your team members to brainstorm together. Give them the right tools that will help them shift their mindset and work collectively towards one ambition. With a horizontal mindset, every meeting will be dynamic, involving people from different departments and thus promoting collective intelligence. As a result, the people leading platforms and those leading the customers must work together towards the same ambition. The shared goal must be to provide customers with a greater, better, and richer experience.

To show your employees that you value their ideas, start by supporting their innovation initiatives and teaching them to learn from their failures. Break up the silos and merge them together. Show your team that there is an even greater outcome when everyone works together. When your team begins to see this in real time, they will be more likely to work with you and not against you.

Another method that would be effective is reverse mentoring. In reverse mentoring, the “leaders” of the company are mentored by junior members. This completely breaks down the hierarchy and shows your employees that everyone’s feedback is valuable regardless of their position in the organisation.

Continually Develop Your Leadership Skills

Finally, a leader of transformation must continue to develop their skills in order to lead their team towards success. In order to figure out exactly how you’ll need to grow, you’ll first need to determine what kind of leader you are. While there are six types of leaders, the two most common types are the hyper-visionaries and the hyper-operational leaders.

Organisations need both types of leaders at different stages of the business transformation. But do not try to be a visionary leader if it does not come naturally to you. Instead, acknowledge this as a potential weakness and enlist the help of other leaders in your team to fill this gap. Take the opportunity to step back and learn something new.

You must also stay abreast of the power of data because this is at the heart of any transformation. You do not necessarily have to study data science or computing, but you should understand what data can bring to your business and how it can shed light on the next steps you should take. Data is a fuel and an asset that has growing value and potential.

Data will also help you gain a big picture perspective. What needs to change to respond to macroeconomic trends? Understand the main differences between the platform economy, sharing economy, service economy, and secular economy, all of which drive the growth of the world. Now consider if your company needs to pivot in any way to stay relevant in the face of up-and-coming economic trends and financial systems.

As a leader, you also have the responsibility to understand your organisation’s corporate social responsibility (CSR). Currently, the main focus is sustainability and financial inclusion. Grow your CSR understanding about sustainable ambition and determine how your company can also implement this in your long-term vision. Using your CSR to tailor your vision not only contributes to society, but it also empowers your employees to work towards the greater good. It is no longer just about growing your profits, but also about making the world a better place.

So, consider how you can shift your strategy so that you create a platform that serves both your business and the society as a whole. If employees are given an opportunity to make a positive impact, this will make a significant difference to their work ethic and motivation.

The Soft Skills Advantage

While it certainly is important to develop hard skills for your business, it is also essential to grow four primary soft skills: creativity, critical thinking, persuasion and negotiation, and emotional intelligence and empathy. Soft skills set humans apart from machines, so it is crucial that you continue to develop these areas to become a more effective leader.

Creativity is a point of differentiation – it’s the use of imagination or original ideas to solve a problem and invent something new. It is unique to your experiences and what you can offer. Inspired creativity can bring life to your organisation and produce innovative ideas that may never be thought of by anyone else. If you have creativity, but do not have critical thinking, then you may not be able to overcome obstacles to realise your vision. Critical thinking is crucial because it questions ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. This can help anyone be one step ahead of the machine.

In order to deliver your ideas effectively, persuasion and negotiation are essential. Whether you’re convincing shareholders or investors to provide the financial resources to support your vision, or inspiring your team to share and contribute, the ability to influence others, regardless of seniority, will take you the distance.

Finally, the icing on the cake is emotional intelligence and empathy. Machines can never over-perform in this area. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise emotion, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and ultimately adjust your behaviour to adapt to the environment or achieve a goal. Empathy is the ability to place yourself in another’s shoes. Both of these components help you cultivate better relationships with the people who work with you.

With a solid combination of these hard and soft skills, you will be able to lead and inspire your team effectively. Take some time to reflect on how you have performed as a leader and how you can improve and work towards better outcomes for your organisation.

Think Outside the Box

There is a common assumption that hiring someone from a different industry can help your organisation succeed. This is definitely not an imperative to the success of your business transformation, but a transversal person can certainly be an asset to your organisation.

A CEO has the responsibility to manage their agenda in a very different way than others who lead businesses because they must juggle the opinions and preferences of their board members, shareholders, and the market. In order to reassure shareholders about your organisation’s digital maturity, hiring someone with the relevant expertise would reassure them.

The security of the shareholders and the market is highly important to the security of your company. If hiring someone from a renowned name provides a sense of reassurance for the investors, then by all means, do what you need to do. But remember that this does not solve everything and do not forget one person won’t transform a company alone.

To me, the most important aspect is business transformation. The more you place transversal people in charge, the more they can bring external expertise, help break silos, and challenge your decision-making for the better. But if they are not truly connected to your business, nothing can happen.

There are two ways to ensure that you make the most of the transversal people in your organisation. First, involve them in co-commitment. Give them strong business outcome objectives. Second, believe in their ability to become the head of a business unit so that they have incentive to impact the business as a whole, rather than simply focus on their expertise.

Define Your Goals

Before you can begin any path to transformation, you must first determine your goals. The two primary goals of any organisation are to enhance customer experience and improve efficiency. Clearly detail the ultimate goal for your organisation to determine what path of transformation is most suitable.  

Work Towards a Collaborative Mindset

As the leader, you set the tone for your organisation. If you want to bring about transformation, you must lead by example, value your team’s innovative ideas, and encourage collaborative working. As you create opportunities that promote a horizontal hierarchy, your team will eventually learn to support and contribute to your vision. 

Never Stop Learning

An effective leader is always seeking new ways to learn, grow, and become a better leader. Throughout your business transformation, take time to assess your current leadership skills and determine how you can also transform into a more empowering leader.