The best way to bring change is to turn it upside down. Start in the field. Design small business experiments and involve the people on the ground. It will lead to insights and interesting discussion about organisational structure, strategy, digital transformation and all the rest. But all those conversation gets contextualized in actions and activities that works in the market, and that works for the people working for you. The key for successful experiments is that the team is set up to collaborate. If the collaboration works well, the rest will follow. This is how you bring change that sticks.
Top down cascading of change initiatives and transformation programs do not work anymore. It used to work because there was enough time, and enough existing knowledge (reliable market forecasts and proven business models) to create strategy and new business and organisational models in which people could find their way and understand how to work and collaborate. Today, in most top down initiatives, there is neither enough time or knowledge about future market trends that allows to anticipate how people should work together to respond adequately to market changes. This is where organisations get stuck and transformations fail.
This is how you get started putting collaboration experiments into action: Ask two key questions: 1. What do we need to accomplish? 2. How do we do it? Re-think how to get it done from scratch. Empower people. Enable people. Go do it. Go small and go fast. Create quick business wins. Boost motivation and performance. It starts small. Then you replicate and scale…. Make sure you learn. Without learning you will not be able to scale and replicate. Learning provide insights that informs strategy and organisational development. This is what we mean by “An organisational development program like no other”. It all starts with collaboration.