We know through research and practice that two thirds of enterprise-wide business transformation efforts fail to meet their intended objectives. Why? In today’s world, disruption can emerge from any place, any time and in ways unexpected. Leaders often ignore or miss the early warning signals due to a variety of factors including cultural inertia, lack of disciplined scanning and decision-making processes, and siloed behavior that tends to discount troubling signs that impact other parts of the organization. When unit leaders turn inward to protect their entities, organizational agility becomes that much harder to achieve.
Effective leaders and their teams can beat the odds that their organizations’ transformation efforts will fail. How? They set proactive agendas that create an inspiring future for employees. They build trust-based cultures of openness and transparency, combined with the discipline to spot and solve significant problems collectively as a team. They align the “messaging” of their agendas with the metrics, milestones, and rewards that provide a clear line-of-sight for employees to understand how they can contribute and what behaviors are valued in their organizations.