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“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”- says Paulo Coelho in his 1988 book-“ The Alchemist”.
Why is it then that many business leaders feel the frustration of their own organization not working the way they want? This is especially more seen in family run businesses that do not have good access to evolving management principles and practices.
In this series- “Anatomy of a Transformation”, we explore the process of transformation for an organization. We will use the analogy of personal transformation for better appreciation. Consider your organization to be a person. You may have a vision of what you want this person to look like, how you want it to behave in certain scenarios and what want it to achieve. If you see a gap between what you have and what you want, this series can help you uncover ways and means to bridge the gap and create the organization of your dreams.
For any transformation to happen, the first requirement is the “need” to transform. I may keep dreaming about and yearning for a fit body with six-pack abs, but in daily life, I may keep postponing action because the effort required is much more than my current “need”. I have known people who have regularly maintained a healthy lifestyle with the motto- “Health is Wealth”. I have also known people who have switched over to healthy lifestyle only after they got their first heart attack. And then there are people who did not mend their ways even after the attack. You can guess what kind of people are more likely to achieve their life goals.
Your business is also like a living person. It was born, named and started learning to interact with the world and grow. Like it or not, one day it will die. What you can work on is how long it will live and how healthy it will stay. Some businesses invest in keeping the systems well-oiled and last long. Some get a rude shock like financial loss, or a drop in demand or a crippling lawsuit and then get in action to transform themselves. And some, just cannot take the shocks and meet premature death. It took the incident of being thrown out of a train to start the transformation of Mohandas to “Mahatma”. Consider what will create the need to transform your business?
Then, some people achieve greatness and are remembered for good long after they are gone, some gain notoriety and quoted as bad examples. Majority of people just spend their time existing in the world for their time and then disappear without making any significant impact. Businesses too behave the same. Most do not care about achieving greatness. They are content with just making money as long as they can and then disappear blaming employees, customers, competitors and governments for their failure. This series if for those leaders who care for their business to go beyond the ordinary. This is for the leaders committed to building extraordinary organizations.
If you consider an organization akin to a human, the various functions like sales, operations, finance etc. are the various body systems. Leadership is certainly the brain and employees are the various cells that make up the body. Achieving transformation is not only the work done by the body, but also how the brain coordinates the various body systems. The brain makes the life choices. The health of individual cells and organs execute these choices. The coordination among the organs determines the effectiveness and efficiency of how well those choices are executed.
Choices made at the central level in an organization are “strategies”, the executing cells are “people”, the interaction of organs and systems are the “processes” and their efficiency is enhance by vitamins called “technology”. Together, these 4 are the pillars of transformation. In this series, we will explore not only these individual pillars of transformation, but also the evolution process.
In the next article, we begin by exploring “decision” as the basic building block of your business and how transforming decision making is fundamental to transforming business.
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