In 1878 Leo Tolstoy released what would become one of his most acclaimed works, the novel ‘Anna Karenina‘. The book started with a quote that over the centuries has transcended disciplines: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.
When taken literally, the quote is a good reflection on family life and family conduct. But as a metaphor, the quote has found application in different fields, from anthropology to ecology, and from philosophy now to business.
"Life will never be the same after COVID-19.” You hear that a lot these days. For many organizations, life will indeed be different after the outbreak as it had a severe and long-lasting impact on its ecosystem. For some organizations, there were even more immediate pressing concerns. A question about survival.
The Covid-19 pandemic reminded us how fragile our societies, businesses, and our lives are. It turned things upside down in a matter of weeks. It required governments to provide dramatic emergency support. It forced people to enter self-isolation to protect themselves and others. It pushed organizations to reimagine how they do business and how they would survive.
Firms need to develop an appetite for innovation, leverage knowledge about customers, and adopt agile ways of working.
Even though the literature on business transformation is enormous, managerial and organisational appetite for change tends to be limited. Leaders of organisations that are remotely successful are not inclined to change things. Transforming the business is not the same as implementing incremental change or improvements in processes, operations and products. We argue that transformation refers to an organisation achieving a sustainable quantum-leap improvement in performance while transforming the mindsets of employees and thus the culture of the organisation.
Only 35% of projects today are completed successfully. One reason for this disappointing rate is the low level of maturity of technologies available for project management. This is about to change. Researchers, startups, and innovating organizations, are beginning to apply AI, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to project management, and by 2030 the field will undergo major shifts. Technology will soon improve project selection and prioritization, monitor progress, speed up reporting, and facilitate testing. Project managers, aided by virtual project assistants, will find their roles more focused on coaching and stakeholder management than on administration and manual tasks. The author show how organizations that want to reap the benefits of project management technologies should begin today by gathering and cleaning project data, preparing their people, and dedicating the resources necessary to drive this transformation.
Most organizations are not well prepared to deal with a serious crisis. The end result of a crisis can either help transform the organization or leave it in a very dangerous position. Crises can emulate fight-or-flight conditions, which are physiological reactions in response to perceived danger, attack, or threat to survival. In animals, as well as humans, this is a natural response mechanism that helps keep us alive.
The key to a successful transformation is building a movement that aligns inside-out and outside-in approaches.
A transformation shaped by the Brightline Transformation Compass is led by committed senior leaders inside your organisation and authored and driven by large numbers of your own employees – the management and front-line team members who have a stake in your success.
Blockchain is emerging as a foundational technology, but there is still groundwork to be done on standards development and the governance of change — and doing that work is critical to enterprise strategy
