What is Your Transformation Engine?

"In the future, the real core competence of companies will be the ability to continuously and creatively destroy and remake themselves to meet customer demands."

-Noel Tichy, Author of The Leadership Engine

Animation of a radial engine.

The concept of re-inventing ourselves is not new. There are countless examples of this mantra in history (think about the U.S.S.R, Germany, or China) and our contemporary culture (think of the TV show The Biggest Loser or the movie The Pursuit of Happyness). The concept rarely lacks lustre. The real challenge surrounds your willingness and ability to reinvent  yourself. How do you reinvent yourself? Your team? Your company? Your community?

From a transformation perspective, the challenge is to create an engine that will drive your change agenda to produce your desired results. To make this happen, a couple of key questions should to be answered to set you off in the right direction, including but not limited to:

  • Do you know where you are going? What are your desired financial results? What are your desired non-financial results? How do these two sets of results relate to each other?
  • How will you drive the transformation? Who serves as the gas pedal? Who serves as the brakes? How do you minimize stepping on the gas and the brake simultaneously?
  • Who are the brains of your transformation? Do you have enough? Do you have the right ones? Are they performing to your needs?
  • Where is the heart of your change agenda? Is your team engaged? Have you won the hearts and minds of the team?
  • Would you describe your transformation engine as "command, control, & authority", "collaborative innovation", or "priority driven teamwork"?
  • Are you unleashing the professional, personal, and emotional capacity of the team to maximize your opportunity for success? If not, why not? What can you do differently to make this happen?
  • As with any engine, what is  your fuel? Are you maintaining your engine? Is it working in concert with the other moving parts or are they out of sync components?

Behind every result, good or bad, there are a series of events. And behind those events are people making decisions, or not, that impact the future. If you know your desired results, you are one step ahead of most. With the benefit of understanding the desired results, your challenge is to identify the transformation engine and associated capabilities that will propel you to deliver your desired financial and non-financial results.

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