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In today’s dynamic business environment, focusing on new ways of working, new capabilities and new technologies shape the way forward. While many leaders seek to capture untapped potential or to realize gains in change or growth, organizational transformations are not easy to get right.

Organizational transformation is a strategic method of getting your organization from where you are now to where you will need to be in the future. The most successful transformations turn ideas into detailed transition plans with trackable, time-bound metrics to measure outcomes. Ultimately, these plans result in value creation, cost savings, growth opportunities, optimization, reskilling and other improvements.

Depending on the type of transformation, it is essential for leaders at every level to align culturally, inter-operationally and strategically.

Researchers have found that in successful transformations, leaders not only make sure their teams have the processes, resources and technology they need — they also build the right emotional conditions.

There are a range of interventions that leaders can implement to facilitate organizational transformations. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the organization’s capability and readiness for change upfront.

Here's what we know about current workforce trends (from Gallup 2024):

1. Only 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization.
2. Only 23% of employees strongly agree that they get the right amount of recognition for the work they do.
3. More than half of employees (53%) say they don’t feel prepared to work with AI or other upcoming technologies.
4. 51% of currently employed workers say they are watching for or actively seeking a new job.
5. Only two in 10 employees feel connected to their organization’s culture.
6. On average, 40% of employees speak up. Quiet quitting is multiplying in workplaces, and with it comes the widespread feeling that it’s simply not worth it to speak up about problems at work.

Are your employees engaged, connected to your culture and invested in leadership’s goals? If you don’t know, find out. Being responsive to employees and the changing workplace ensures your organization won’t have to grapple with failed initiatives and broken morale.

Start asking the right questions, uncover the uncommon knowledge about your organization and stay ahead of workplace trends through these types of assessments.

Transformation assessment

Determine what’s changing. Transformation assessments analyze the type and extent of the changes required, readiness and how it will affect different areas of the organization – such as employees or teams, processes, technology, culture and competency.

Prior to and during the transformation process, assessments provide crucial information and feedback about the “state of the state,” potential strategies and measures of progress for achieving the desired transformation.

From our experience, implementing a relevant and useful transformation assessment and fully integrating it into strategic, operational and people processes allows organizations to acquire real time internal knowledge and the data necessary to pinpoint issues to strategize and successfully drive change efforts.

Some organizations flounder during transformation because too many initiatives are going on at once, spreading the organization’s resources too thin. Accordingly, what an organization chooses not to do is every bit as important as what it does. Organizations that excel at implementation foster a leadership style that sets a vision and inspires others while defining clear accountabilities – emphasizing the challenging and supportive dimensions of leadership during transformation.

Leadership capability assessment

The need for effective leadership during transformations today is also unprecedented. Gaps in the leadership pipeline from the frontline to executive levels, changing leadership requirements, inadequate leadership capabilities and the greater need to grow talent internally all point to the importance of assessing leadership capability. Sustainable organizational transformation requires a solid leadership pipeline with development systems available to consistently guide and shape leadership aptitude.

During a transformation, our team evaluates competency and skills at every level to determine leadership capabilities. These capabilities are then linked to the organizational transformation assessment to determine impact on factors such as communication, culture, morale and performance.

As stated by Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets managed.”

One might add: What goes unmeasured – or gets measured only superficially – risks being mismanaged or, at least, undermanaged.

Assessments, surveys & focus groups

For over 30 years, our team has developed and implemented a wide range of assessments, surveys and focus groups to strengthen capability, coach and develop talent, align and enhance performance, redesign process and systems, enhance change transformations, strategize business for the future, and improve the overall health and well-being of organizations from the board room to the frontline.

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