A Primer on Transformational Leadership
— BMC Customer Success
All great leaders share common traits: their change vision is easy to comprehend; they surround themselves with the right people to drive the change; they are compelling storytellers and salespeople for change; and they demonstrate courage and tenacity in managing stakeholders and challenging situations.
Great leaders define their vision by taking action.
LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
What kind of organization do we want to be?
ACHIEVING VISION SUCCESS
By starting with the end in mind and establishing a change vision, you as an organizational leader have a strong focus point to lead change, and it provides the starting point for strategy design (how you accomplish your vision) and the underpinning critical success factors, KPIs, and supporting transformation initiatives. Once you have your end point, you’re ready
to put your vision in writing.
Before you begin, ask yourself:
Answering this question provides a sense of urgency and builds momentum for immediate
decisions around operating models required to help drive the change.
Why now?
With a compelling endpoint in mind, crafting an effective and persuasive change vision can be as simple as asking and answering two more key questions:
DRAFTING A CHANGE VISION
Why do anything?
Support the answer with data to facilitate fact-based conversation, influence others, and obtain stakeholder buy-in.
+ Seek feedback from influential leaders, some of whom may not be part of the formal organization
+ Conduct stakeholder analysis to help establish people of influence
+ Seek tools to help accelerate this process
Reaching a point where key stakeholders believe that your draft change includes their input is a good indication that you now have a Common Change Vision.
TURN YOUR CHANGE VISION INTO A TEAM ACTIVITY
COMMON CHANGE VISION: THE FIRST STEP TOWARD ENDURING TRANSFORMATION
To ensure employees can connect their role in the organization to the vision in a practical way, take into consideration the organization’s current operating model and ask two simple questions:
+ What will the organization need to do and change to reach the desired future state?
+ What will the organization need for the team to be successful?
By answering these two questions, an IT leader starts to define the future mode of operations and the critical success factors required to accomplish it.
COMMON CHANGE VISION: THE FIRST STEP TOWARD ENDURING TRANSFORMATION
Elements to consider when developing or refining the digital transformation strategy to ensure the operating model evolves with the changes in technology:
Define current processes and changes needed to accomplish business goals.
Invest time in redefining your data architecture.
Plan how the future mode of operations will impact your organizational structure and people..
Outline the culture, behavior and norms you need people to adopt.
Identify the tools and applications required to enable the processes you’ve defined and establish a standardized reference architecture.
Establish how performance will be measured and used to drive ongoing, end-to-end service delivery, including both lagging and leading indicators.
Establish a robust operational governance structure that drives strategic alignment and promotes good decision making.
A MEANS TO SUSTAIN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
A MEANS TO SUSTAIN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Digital transformation endures by creating a community of change champions charged with building change momentum, driving continuous improvement, and measuring outcomes.
CHANGE CHAMPIONS
The right type of change champion profile is determined by the organization’s culture.
+ Have the ability to see the big picture and translate the change for their team/department
+ Are respected and seen as go-to people, especially across functions or departments
+ Are highly engaged in the workplace and able to influence positively
+ Are available to attend meetings and training as required
+ Are able to identify resistance to change and support colleagues in a positive manner
+ Are able to provide a balanced perspective and communicate feedback effectively
+ Demonstrate determination and ability to deliver
Effective change champions:
ACTIVATING THE COMMUNITY OF CHANGE CHAMPIONS
At BMC, we work with customers to establish and run a community of practice in the form of a Governance Office, focused on measuring the value IT delivers to lines of business and improving the quality of service delivered to the IT organization’s internal and external customers. The Governance Office for any program outlines the essential components needed to direct, monitor, and evaluate the strategy and roadmap, processes, services, and tools, as well as drives the execution of the program and change vision.
To build an effective Governance Office:
Establish a mission for the team that creates an identity and sense of purpose, making it easy for team members to rally around and explain their purpose.
Create a charter document that sets out the purpose, goals, scope, and authority, including operating structure, responsibilities, and key roles.
Define controls, metrics, measures, and KPIs to describe how the objectives and targets set by the program will be measured, with a view to improve quality, value, operational efficiency, and alignment to customer business models.
Build a roadmap to help define the activities required to operationalize the Governance Office, and provide a timeline for achieving quick wins and longer-term objectives.
Institute a change strategy that includes a communication plan to drive innovation and foster change.
Celebrate your accomplishments along the way!
REFERENCES
REFERENCES
Resources used to develop this content are from noted change experts:
+ Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. Random House, 2001.
+ Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster, 1999.
+ Kotter, John. “How to Create a Powerful Vision for Change.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Feb. 2013,
www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2011/06/07/how- to-create-a-powerful-vision-for-change/#106c1b3e51fc.