The Metamorphosis

The organizational transformation or metamorphosis is multi-dimensional; many different skills are needed and have to be integrated to reach to a successful organizational transformation through innovation. The following are few elements to be taken into consideration.

Transforming the organization

Organizational transformation is all about bundling expertise, increasing productivity, optimizing workflows and improving social structures. This requires departments to be amalgamated or split up, new teams to be built and new-age managers to be appointed wherever possible. A difficult process that needs careful deliberation & reflection that results in a new organization structure. And the process still continues to evolve, even when the new organization structure is in place.

The focus of organizational metamorphosis is to improve the sustainable performance – economical, environmental, societal and human – and the resilience of the organisation to the changing scenario both external & internal.

The first step in the process is to notify all those affected. If key organizational & operational changes are made, all employees must then be informed. It is vital to ensure, that the employees do not meet misunderstandings or confusion. Beginning with innovation and transformation efforts require lots of strategic action plan and brainstorming so that the effort does not become unsuccessful.

Innovation and Transformation:

Innovation for transformation in and of itself can be complex. It usually includes large-scale and highly complex organizational change, with manifold inter-dependencies. The challenge of actually implementing innovation is debatably just as hard as the process of creating the innovation itself.

If an organization has significant emphasis on implementing innovation across the enterprise and bring transformation to bring business process improvements, ground-breaking strategies, new processes and above all cultural changes, then it has to think of innovation seriously. Innovation terms of people, process and product.

Innovation & Implementation

It’s obvious that culture of innovation can make a company raucously successful.  But the issues & challenges an innovative organization faces is to make sure that enough care is being taken on to how to actually apply all the wonderful notions & thoughts they come up with. 

Organizations that are looking to survive and even thrive with an innovative culture need be “change-adept”.  This means they will:

• provide the skill and structure required to identify problems and improvement opportunities
• technically implement solutions in a cost-effective and efficient manner
• manage all aspects of the implementation including the human and cultural elements, including eliminating the “silo mentality” so common in organizations, and reinforcing collaboration
• and provide the organizational support, time, and resources needed for implementation success.

Hence, the leaders of the innovation should have a laser-focus on the capability of the organization to implement innovation resulting in desired transformation. In fact, “Implementation” has to be developed as a core capability because without this, the innovative thoughts & ideas may be there, but there will not be any change.   

Great Idea to Implementation Success

Building implementation capability into an organization is the most significant task. It’s the role of the leaders which is of utmost importance as they need to recognize that having a good idea or strategy is only a small part of their accountability. They must be accountable for implementation as well.  In fact, the actions of the Leaders & Sponsors are the single most important factor in getting changes implemented—much more important than the transformation team or the “Change Agents.”

Organizations must also embrace a structured implementation processthat can be married with other critical business protocols, such as Lean Six Sigma or Agile.  

Apart from a structured framework, implementation should include tactics & plan of actions for managing the human and cultural elements of strategic initiatives. Even the best idea is likely to fall stall out or flat, if there is a lack of an organized process for implementation. The change transformation procedure need to offer a dynamic set of tools and measurement diagnostics, along with a systematic & structured framework for managing the human elements of any change project from business process enhancement to Transformational Change.  

A structured innovation & change management methodology helps to ensure achieve the desired business outcomes in the following ways.

Key Elements Of Structured Process That Drives Innovation

1. Building Change Agent Capacity- the development of a highly skilled & highly-qualified network of Change Agents who will implement the changes around the innovation at the local level is the next action step. It’s to be strongly understood even if the innovation is developed at the corporate level, implementation is always at the local level.
2. Measuring the Climate for transformation- An assessment diagnostic is essential to understand the cultural barriers to change that are inherent in an organization and must be overcome if the organisation is going to be innovative.
3. Generating management support – Getting the reinforcing support for the desired new behaviors associated with the innovation down and across the enterprise is an essential element in structured Process that Drives Innovation for transformation.
4. Target Readiness for the Change – it is about preparing the organization by developing and managing resistance to the innovation. Innovation brings disruption, so even if it denotes forward progress and what can be considered “positive,” but resistance is unescapable. An organisation can’t go innovative organization unless there is resistance.
5. Building on a Communication Plan – application of multiple delivery methods that communicate the changes around the innovation with feedback loops built in so that one can gather data back from the Targets.
6. Developing an Underpinning Strategy – there are positive values for those that demonstrate they are “on the bus”, and negative consequences for those that continue to work in the old ways. These reinforcements must be meaningful for the Targets, and applied with immediacy and certainty.

There are 3 things that HR Professionals can do to foster transformation, innovation & Change in an organisation:

• Hire for innovation & change
• Create a culture of transformation
• Train and reward for transformation & innovation

Hire for Innovation & change – Hiring for innovation requires that we identify people who can “think outside the box.” Let’s not assume that everyone is equally innovative, but instead let’s recruit people for their innovation capabilities.

Create a culture of transformation – The ability to help create, protect and build organizational culture is a critical role for HR to play, as it is a major driver for innovation. Nevertheless, management needs to plan, support and nurture a culture of innovation for innovation to be fruitful. An Unsupportive Culture is the Number One Obstacle to Innovation. A recent study by the Harris Group indicated that Executives see a culture of innovation as crucial to not only growing their business (95%) and profitability (94%) but also for attracting and keeping talent (86%).

Train and reward for transformation & innovation- to sustain an innovation focus in a business, organizations must change their evaluation and compensation structures. Organizations should have well-defined criteria to evaluate work associated with innovation. As compensation is extremely correlated to evaluation results, hence, if the evaluation program doesn’t recognize or measure innovation efforts, there can be an environment of dissatisfaction.  The HR can devise an additional compensation for innovation activities, ideas & thoughts encouraging employees to focus on business as usual over innovation. If the compensation plan does not recognize innovation, why should any manager focus on innovation or innovative ideas for organizational growth. HR may plan to generate a few new full-time roles to support innovation, whereas many individuals in the organization may be called on to contribute on a part-time basis as idea generators, evaluators, or subject matter experts. These innovation activities needs to receive as much “weight” in the compensation and evaluation program as other tasks that sustain business as usual.

Conclusion

The metamorphosis of organizational change starts with the need to understand the self and the environment and therefore one can contribute through shared vision leading to the establishment of collaborative roadmap to achieve the vision. The employees need to get engaged and should feel inclusiveness through creativity, planning for action, action outcome and taking ownership in total. It is also essential to build trust, enabling dialogue for outpouring, circle of togetherness. The goals lead to the teaming and learning of the employees in the organisation by setting down targets, challenging the status quo, willingness to commit and own up failures or the inadequacy both system driven and acceptance of data and fact orientation.  The need for the change should be felt by both the individual and the organisation fueled by the hunger to achieve and go beyond the restraints of socio dynamics and socio- market forces. Therefore the evocation of the meaning making, self-realization drives the organizational change which is greater than the resistance. Here the role of HR becomes momentous.

As HR leaders, serving the organization to realize more innovations, to create a culture that supports innovative thinking and to hire, train and reward is a major responsibility. The journey of innovation & transformation is huge but exciting process. Even a small initiative to demonstrate the possibilities of a new innovation can help organization reach positive transformation.