« What I appreciated the most is that Make Tracks managed to help me review my ambitions, without reducing them, but making them more relevant to Electrolux Professional. I’m referring to the approach they developed to work on the target processes. I was too focused on the business model, and not addressing in depth the target process-step would have been a mistake. »

Lionel Blouin

General Manager Electrolux Professional France (2019-2022)

How many spectacular transformation projects have you witnessed only for the project to end in a fizzle? While difficulty in capitalising on the potential of a transformation is generally multifactorial, our experience on a recent project with Electrolux Professional France highlighted the importance of responding to the following three questions to deepen your transformation preparedness.

How is your transformation project positioned internally?

The choice of the key people to lead the transformation project may require ownership across the organisation to ensure its success. For example, in the case of a project launched within a subsidiary, identifying a sponsor at the strategic level, say in the Group’s executive team, and a sponsor at the subsidiary level, could be one way to do this. Such an approach at the start of a transformation project has several advantages:

‘Big picture’ continuity. By linking the change objectives with strategic orientations, the transformation is situated within the broader goals of the organisation.

Change with a purpose. Symbolically, sponsors embody the ‘why’ of the project. As custodians of meaning, the sponsors legitimise their role in creating the shared understanding to mobilise the people and resources for the transformation.

Accountability. Over and above a sponsor’s sense-making role, in pragmatic terms, it is clear where the responsibility lies for the project and who needs to make the decisions. Key decisions could be defining the scope of the project or prioritising the project over others if required.

Is your organisation implementation-ready?

For example, high turnover may make continuity between the before and the after difficult if the transformation is not grounded in its people. Given the central role of middle management in a transformation project, instability of the management team could also hamper its progress. Similarly, running multiple projects in parallel may present resource challenges, but it could also indicate that greater integration is required, necessitating a new set of questions related to overall organisational cohesion.

What is your organisation’s transformation experience?

The discomfort generated by the uncertainty of any transformational process requires opening a space to not only explore the unknown, but to empathise with the birth pangs of change. Organisations are typically resistant to change so this question can clarify whether the organisation has the skills and methods to drive the transformation. Recognising these challenges, the French commercial subsidiary of Electrolux Professional sought our experience for the design phase of its transformation project.

To ground the change process, we took a snapshot of the organisation focussing on current roles and responsibilities, business processes, and problem areas. The greater clarity enabled us to work together in developing the new business processes. Key however was the participation of stakeholders from the various functional areas in clarifying their needs and functional interdependencies. In this way, the implementation plan was co-designed to ensure an integrated view of each person’s operational reality, while anchoring skills for future projects. Doing otherwise might undermine the transformation’s success as the subsidiary’s General Manager and initiator of the project emphasises.

“For me, a concrete and pragmatic target plan can only be achieved with an inclusive method that combines skills and contradictory exchanges in a structured way to ensure everyone is onboard. It was the intersection of different perspectives and initiatives that made it possible to achieve the objective and propose target processes and an implementation plan. Each perspective and project stage are necessary. There is no possibility to shortcut or ignore one of the perspectives, except to deteriorate the transformation depth and end up making superficial changes.”

His words are a reminder that transformations require time and energy to bring them to fruition but more importantly, a reminder of the potential they offer.

Is your organisation ready to realise its transformation potential?