KEY TO SUCCESSFUL TRANSFORMATION
By: Geetika Arora

Transformation is for people and successful transformation is through the people. The transformation that is not driven by the people is never beneficial for either the people or for an organization. The whole exercise of transformation has to be through the people and not just for the people. The people need to be in centre of any successful transformation.

Following are important factors that come into play in any major transformation activity:

1. Leadership:

What’s important for successful transformation is leadership and not mere management. Leaders should involve their subordinates to shape the intentions behind transformations.

Leaders must share their vision, mission, and objectives for transformation with their subordinates and make them an integral part of the same. Leaders need to role models for the subordinates. Transformation should not be imposed on employees; employees should be stakeholders and drivers of transformation implementation as well as benefits.

2. Polices and Processes:

The policies and processes may need to be modified and aligned as a part of transformation.

Some times policies and processes have been made long time back and they are not updated with the changing times and they no longer fit into the business environment in which organization is surviving.

Historical and irrelevant policies and processes need to be eliminated. Problematic policies and processes need to be updated according to current business environment.

3. Planning

Planning is one of the first steps in the transformation process. Any sort transformation of the organization needs proper planning, as it is a major activity. Planning involves finding answers to questions such as: why, when, who, and how of transformation.

Planning stage provides an excellent opportunity for people to come up with innovative and creative ideas to make the transformation happen.

4. Restructuring

The word restructuring means changing the structure of an organization. Since structure is backbone of an organization, restructuring is a major activity that impacts an organization to a large extent. It is very important that employees are made an integral part of restructuring exercise for the new structure to function well.

5. People: The most important factor

People need to be focus of all activities relating to transformation. It is not one factor, it is perhaps the only factor that determines the success of the transformation.

It is crucial to involve employees in every stage of the transformation from the conceptualization, planning and implementation.

Also it is important that organization must provide employees the rationale for change. This means that employees should know the reasons behind the change, the benefits from the transformation and how these changes would help them in their growth and development.

Benefits of People Centric Transformation

Following are some of direct benefits of people centric transformation:

• High level of ownership and motivation
  The main advantage of transformation through people is that individuals take responsibility for the organizational outcomes rather than organization taking responsibility for individual outcomes. Hence “It’s our job” replaces “It’s not my job”.
  

• Efficient and Timely transformation Exercise
  When transformation is done through people then the transformation becomes easy and the overall the transformation process would be efficient.
  

• Congenial Organizational Climate
  Basically transformation through people helps in creating healthy climate inside the organization. It helps in creating atmosphere of open communication, mutual trust and collaboration in the organization.

Summary

Transformation helps organization to adapt itself to the change. Since change is the only constant thing, what determines the success or failure of an organization in long run is the transformation.

All the dimensions come into play during the transformation: Leadership, Planning, Processes and Policies, and Restructuring, it is important the focus should be on employee’s engagement and involvement. The focus on people is “The Key” to successful transformation.

The focus on people in whole transformation process, leads to infusion of ownership in the people, efficient and timely transformation exercise and Congenial Organizational Climate prevailing in the organization. This leads to success and growth of the organization.

Geetika Arora,
Lecturer,
Punjab College of Technical Education,
Ludhiana HR Trainee with Hughes Software Systems,
geetika_arora_147@yahoo.com