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“Transforming the business is a key management process that is now an everyday practice. In other words, managing a business now equates to transforming it. For 82% of managers, transforming the organization has become of vital importance in business… with 94% saying that these transformations are an integral part of their daily existence.”

The ability to implement effective major organizational change is recognised by business leaders as a critical requirement for future success. But major Transformation Programs are necessarily far-reaching and complex in nature. To be successful in delivering significant organizational change, the Transformation Program will often need to span business units, functional areas, geographic regions and time-zones. Additionally, the activities that need to be undertaken across the business are multi-dimensional, covering leadership, resource management, capability development, organizational structure, performance management and employee engagement.

The leadership team, who have identified the business imperative which demands organizational change management, are immediately confronted with the challenge of how to communicate this compelling need to the broader organization in order to effect the transformation. Typically as the “Tops-down” message is broadcast through a dispersed organization, the rationale for change and “call to action” is diluted at the lower levels and outer reaches of the structure, resulting in a reduction in employee engagement and alignment.

To add further to the challenge, due to the multi-dimensional nature of Transformation, the activities required in each of the functional areas or geographies will be different; for example for a transformation effort with the objective of improving profitability, Production may be focussed on cost reduction programs whilst Sales may be introducing customer excellence initiatives to improve growth. The Leadership team is faced with a complex matrix of activities to manage and control in order to effect sustainable organizational change.

So in the light of these challenges, what is the success rate of Transformation Programs? In short, the research doesn’t tell a good story!

In the late 1990’s PROSCI, the market-leading BPR and change management research and consulting organization, published their ADKAR change model, followed in 2004 by their Change Management Maturity model. Their year on year research findings show little movement from the 30% success rate established by Kotter in 1995. McKinsey’s research in 2009 also concluded that this rate was still running below 40%. PROCSI’s latest 2009 research cites the top two reasons for failure as:

• The gap between the strategic vision and a successful Program implementation and the lack of a practical change management model and tools to bridge that gap.
• The "hidden and built in resistance to change" of organizational cultures and the lack of processes and change management methodologies to address this.

So, latest research underlines the issues described above, namely the lack of employee engagement in the Transformation management process together with the absence of a cohesive, comprehensive system to manage the whole Program complexity. Indeed, these two factors may overlap. Basically, it is easy to see how the lack of an appropriate framework into which to contribute can be a significant inhibitor to facilitating sustained employee participation and the full engagement of the organization in the Transformation process.

Promoting Sustained Organizational Engagement in Transformation

Transformation processes involve many human interactions and so are inherently complex in nature. The “hidden and built in resistance to change" of organizational cultures needs to be minimized to enhance the chance of success. Clearly this resistance will be significantly reduced if the fundamental needs of each participant in the Transformation management process can be met, so increasing engagement.

We have identified the typical participants in a typical Transformation management process as:

• CXO (Board level)
• Program Manager
• Team Member
• Individual Employee
• Public, External Stakeholder



The chart below shows the key needs for each type:


Public external stakeholder	Employee	Team member	Program Mgr, HR, Director	CXO
Inclusion in the change process	Inclusion in the change process	Single environment for all change activities	Management of multiple, complex  activities	Successful execution of strategy
Ability to participate	Understand  corporate priorities	On-line tools to support the work	Sustain momentum following launch	Rapid implementation
Suggest improvements	Contribute and participate in key initiatives	Locate, connect and leverage experience of others	Repeatable, standard, transformation methodology	Repeatable, standard, transformation methodology
Involvement in activities	Get own ideas heard	Collaborate virtually  without need for  travel	Leverage experience across the organization	Visibility through real-time executive dashboard
Offer experience	Be able to make a difference to the business’ success	Knowledge  management capability for team output	Real time visibility of progress	Ability to provide focused feedback and support
Understand status and progress	Work on the “right things”	Linkage of team to corporate goals	Real time, consistent measurement of benefits	Ongoing development of the transformation capabilities of the organization
Have a sense of making a difference	Recognition of  contributions made	Visibility of status and progress	Flexible reporting capability	Focus whole organization on key initiatives
	Understand status and progress	Recognition of team contribution	Ability to provide focused feedback and support	Maximise productivity through full employee engagement
	Have the right tools to work effectively		Motivate and engage all employees on key initiatives	Recognise and reward success
	Develop own skillsets		Identify star performers	Avoid bureaucratic, high cost, program management

The needs are diverse in nature. For example, the CXO’s overarching need is for the achievement of the strategic goal in a timely manner, and to this end have visibility of progress and the ability to intervene in real-time.


In contrast, an individual employee may view the initiative more in terms of “what does this mean for me” and so may be motivated by feeling included, having their ideas heard, knowing they are working on the “right things” and being recognised for their contribution. Program Managers may feel empowered to enact the change processes under their remit if provided with the right framework and tools to perform the work and the ability to readily garner resources and expertise from the broader organization.

Increasing the Success Rate of Transformation Programs

Until now, there has been no single solution which provides a practical Transformation Management system to enact major organizational change and addresses the needs of each participant in the Program. element8, who have over 20 years experience in helping leadership teams successfully enact change in companies such as Johnson Controls, ST Microelectronics and Royal Bank of Scotland, have recently produced xpoint^TM, a unique Web 2.0 enabled Sharepoint Application that fills this void.



At the heart of this Initiative Collaboration software is the Transformation Lifecycles module. Here Initiative teams can come together and perform their work in a single environment, using a repeatable, structured methodology supported by e-tools and e-coaching capabilities.


Underpinning this are collaboration tools such as chat, forums and expert locator to enable the right people to be found and work together in virtual teams. A document management capability allows work that is completed to be readily stored and retrieved within the platform. In this environment, the efficiency and effectiveness of teams is greatly enhanced and sustained engagement can be achieved as the needs of both Program Managers and Team Members are met.

The performance management module meets the need of the CXO and Program Managers with full, real-time oversight of the status of the Transformation effort, so enabling timely intervention where necessary and the ability to identify and reward successes along the way. The Connectivity module allows updates and alerts to be sent automatically to mobile devices and email. All of this negates the need for a costly Program Office to laboriously gather and collate information which is often out of date by the time it is published.

In summary, xpoint^TM provides a unique solution to the two major factors that cause Transformation Programs to fail – the lack of an organizational change management system and failure to engage each participant group.

How engaged are you teams, and do you need greater engagement to accelerate your Transformation Management Programs?