Enterprise transformation: Envision, believe and develop

Transformation is defined as a complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone – like transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly.

Talking in the context of an organization, it's a significant change in ways of working of that organization. I have been actively involved in business transformations for the last 2 decades. Here, I'll dig into some of those case studies and experiences, in conceptualizing, communicating, and executing transformation.

All Enterprise Transformations follow 3 major Steps

1. Envision, Believe, Develop
2. BHAG. - Motivate the Decision Makers

3. Execute

This is the first part of the three-part series on ‘Transformation’ - Envision, Believe, Develop

Vision: where it begins?’

They say everything is built twice - First, in your mind, and then in the physical world. You can take a few examples that you usually see around you. Whether it's a highway or a building or a school or even your own house, it was first conceptualised in someone’s mind. It was first built in your mind, that ‘I want it like this!’ and then it was executed in the physical world.

Everything is built twice. First in your imagination. Then in reality. Everything – No exceptions!

In organizational jargon, it's called ‘visioning.’ So, let us cut the jargon. The simple question is - ‘What's the end state?’ It also resonates in Stephen Covey's first habit, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’

'What is it that you want to do?’ 'Leave aside the current state - just think how you want the future state to be?’ Iterate it, refine it, find the gaps, and convert that into a compelling story.

Let me dig into my experience of Industry First Integrated CRM-DMS.

It was 2002 and three of us fast trackers in Tata Motors were asked to do CRM. We thought - ‘let us look around, what is the best way to do it?’ and then we started conceptualizing it with deep discussions. We benchmarked with other industries and identified the core tenets of CRM - real time information of the customer, across multiple channels, and across multiple stakeholders. We started forming a picture of what that future CRM was going to look like - it was nothing, not at all close to what existed.

We said - ‘the future world is going to be connected. Let us get rid of the traditional concept of CRM, i.e., ‘The dealer will have a system and it will get integrated to our system and every night, data transfers will happen.’

We thought - ‘No! Today we have 600 dealerships. These are going to become 6,000 over 10-15 years. Can we really be monitoring and managing those many integrations? So, why don't we combine the local dealership system with OEM! Why don't we have one
single central system?’

Nobody had done that before. But we continued conceptualizing it in terms of ‘what kind of outcomes it would give us?’ ‘We can be like Banks, the moment some transaction happens at the dealership, Tata Motors call center will come to know about it and then at once, can call up the customer.’

It took us five-six years to get there – the first mover disadvantage – we have to learn everything fresh. We continuously kept at it, ‘how it will improve customer satisfaction?’

Here is the trick. We were not building it in our mind from a technology point of view. We thought technology will come. The first thing we should be clear about is the outcomes that you will get. For example, you take your car or truck anywhere in India, the dealer will have

access to the service history - an immensely powerful proposition! We will be able to monitor the turnaround time at the workshop at a massive all-India scale. We started jotting all these down and we created a picture that was very compelling. Even though there was no technology for that yet. Nobody had done that yet.

But the idea and the compelling detailing of that idea in about 30 odd slides was so powerful and clear that when we shared it with the leadership team, everyone got excited. Our homework and clear outcome led thought process was applauded.

The vision was crystal clear, thought through, and ambitiously fresh.

Here you bring the third picture of putting the pieces together.

That takes us to the next step in the transformation – getting decision makers to decide, which we will discuss in the next article.

You must have a vision that is credible and well thought through. The vision must
be powerful from its transformative ability, and you believe in it. What it means is that it should be able to move your KPIs to a completely different level. It should create new capabilities. It should take you ahead, much ahead of the league. And finally, you have developed it sufficiently to become credible and pragmatic.

Next week we will discuss the next leg of transformation BHAG - Motivate the Leaders

BHAG is Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Make it big enough to motivate the leaders to put their heft behind the transformation. But it can only happen if you have Envisioned, Believed and Developed your transformation idea sufficiently.

Watch out for the next episode next week.

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The article has been written by Jagdish Belwal, Founder and CEO, Jagdish Belwal Advisory