“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.“

Antony Jay

Luckily, when it comes to transformations while the question whether it is

• a) relevant,
• b) important
• c) omnipresent… it does not take lots of creativity to agree to
• d) all of the above.

But understanding and agreement still do not commence action per se.

So whereas lots of literature and zeitgeist

• seem to ask “Why do transformations fail?”   or 
• recommend to have a clear “Why do you do what you do?”,

I would love to focus on a different set of questions for today:

How to start?

How to have a successful change activity – whether process excellence of business transformation?

How to remain successful?

And of course, the answers will fall into the thematic buckets of …

• Management buy-in
• stakeholder alignment
• lowering resistance to change
• change management
• having the right mindset,
• formulating a clear strategy
• drafting an even clearer execution plan (of tasks, not people, I presume)
• being process-centric…
• human-centric
• outside-in
• inside-out
• middle-out
• clear communication
• upskilling
• rightskilling
• 2 pizza size teams
• agile
• right technology (but human-centric, see above)
• data-driven (duh!)
• digital mindset (double duh!)
• did I mention human-centric?
• I could go on forever but I won’t…

Just to hear at the Kick off meeting, “Change is the only constant in life – you got half the resources, double the scope, gotta run, bye bye!”

However, if change is the only constant in life (ignoring c = speed of light), why are we so bad it, still?

After all, does that mean that we are also very bad at life?

I would insist that this is not the case.

Join me on this journey to find better questions, so that we might find better answers together.

Oh, and regarding the 1st question regarding the “How” to get started, we just did. 

Next time, let’s assess some more questions!

Congratulations on your start – the hardest part is done!