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Organizational transformation|Transformations That Work
Organizational transformation

Transformations That Work

Lessons from companies that are defying the odds by Michael Mankins and Patrick Litre

From the Magazine (May–June 2024)
Rick Salafia

Summary.   

More than a third of large organizations have some type of transformation program underway at any given time, and many launch one major change initiative after another. Though they kick off with a lot of fanfare, most of these efforts fail to deliver. Only 12% produce lasting results, and that figure hasn’t budged in the past two decades, despite everything we’ve learned over the years about how to lead change. Clearly, businesses need a new model for transformation. In this article the authors present one based on research with dozens of leading companies that have defied the odds, such as Ford, Dell, Amgen, T-Mobile, Adobe, and Virgin Australia. The successful programs, the authors found, employed six critical practices: treating transformation as a continuous process; building it into the company’s operating rhythm; explicitly managing organizational energy; using aspirations, not benchmarks, to set goals; driving change from the middle of the organization out; and tapping significant external capital to fund the effort from the start.
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Nearly every major corporation has embarked on some sort of transformation in recent years. By our estimates, at any given time more than a third of large organizations have a transformation program underway. When asked, roughly 50% of CEOs we’ve interviewed report that their company has undertaken two or more major change efforts within the past five years, with nearly 20% reporting three or more.

Read more on Organizational transformation or related topics Change management, Organizational change, Adaptive leadership and Creativity
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Read more on Organizational transformation or related topics Change management, Organizational change, Adaptive leadership and Creativity

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