Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. I'm going to share my screen very quickly, and hopefully, you can see some swirly worldies. Then I'll start my presentation, and hopefully, you can see that as well. If not, hopefully, someone will let me know. But hopefully, you can see Achieving a Tipping Point on Your Transformation.
So thanks, John, for that, by the way, because you've touched on a lot of the points I'm going to touch on. Now, this could be awkward because I could be saying the complete opposite of you. Thankfully, I'm going to reinforce a lot of what you said. We seem to be very aligned, so we avoid that prospect.
Key Messages
Allow me to move through to what we're going to cover today. Three key messages I really want to get across:
- How we can achieve lasting change through selectively targeting your audience initially. I'll touch on the same diffusion of innovation curve that John just mentioned.
- How we can make the change holistic and avoid shallow transformations. What areas do we need to focus on to ensure that happens?
- How we can make one key decision at the start of a transformation or change initiative that will 10x the chances of that being successful.
Alright, what's that one key decision? Well, all will be revealed as we move on for the next 20 minutes or so.
The Challenge of Complex Change
Now, as we know, most complex change fails. In fact, most agile transformations fail as well. Here are some numbers from McKinsey. They probably like these numbers because a lot of that $10 billion probably goes their way. Probably less so the second one—70% fail to achieve stated goals. We need to do better than that.
My friend and mentor, Mike Beadle, used to say, "It's easier to grow a unicorn than to transform a dinosaur." Well, we're not necessarily trying to grow unicorns right now, but we are trying to help organizations evolve and improve, and we're going to focus on that—however hard it may seem sometimes.
Lessons from the Minidisc Player
Let me introduce you to a couple of topics. This is a minidisc player, for those of you who remember those. I used to love my minidisc player. I remember when I got it—I was a big fan. I had a Sony Walkman first when I was really small, then a Discman, but it was the minidisc player I really loved. I thought it was going to be the next big thing. I tried to get all of my CDs onto minidisc.
Sadly, not so many people agreed with my perspective, and the minidisc died quite soon after being introduced, which made me sad. For a while after that, I found it hard to listen to music on the go. I found MP3s fiddly. Nothing really kicked off. Then, in 2001, Steve Jobs and Apple unveiled the iPod, which sent MP3s and digital music off into the stratosphere. There were a number of key reasons why that succeeded where others didn’t. I will come back to those shortly.
Crossing the Chasm
What I want to do is reinforce what John just talked about regarding the diffusion of innovation curve. You have the innovators, the early adopters—these form the early market. Then, you've got the early majority, the late majority, and the laggards, which form the mainstream market.
Here’s the thing. The way you really achieve success and cross that chasm—the problem with the minidisc player is that it never crossed the chasm. It never moved from early adopters like me, who were excited about new technology, to the more conservative early majority. The iPod did, and there are some key reasons for that. This also applies to change.
When targeting people, it’s easy to say, "We need the early majority—let’s target them." My advice from experience is: ignore them for now. Ignore the early majority, late majority, and laggards. When starting, you need to target the innovators and early adopters. These are the people who are excited by change, transformation, and doing things differently. You won’t have to convince them.
You need to make it work with these people on a value stream, product, or service. Start small, experiment, make mistakes in a cheap way, iterate, and improve. Demonstrate success two or three times. Once you've done that, and you have documented tangible success, then—and only then—do you move on to the early majority.
Holistic Change
Another key point is that Scrum—or any other framework—is not enough. Processes, practices, frameworks, tools—these are important, but they are not sufficient on their own. A successful transformation requires a holistic approach.
I call this the Six Enablers of Business Agility:
- Leadership and Management: Moving from command-and-control to enabling leadership.
- Culture: Creating openness, trust, and psychological safety.
- Organizational Structure: Reducing silos and aligning teams to customer value.
- People and Engagement: Encouraging initiative, creativity, and collaboration.
- Governance and Funding: Moving away from rigid, upfront business cases.
- Ways of Working: Adopting appropriate practices that align with business needs.
Leadership-Driven Change
All successful transformations have been leadership-driven. Whether it's David Marquet on the USS Santa Fe, General Stanley McChrystal at JSOC, or Satya Nadella at Microsoft—these transformations were led by the most senior person. Leaders set the tone and culture. If leaders are truly driving the change, your chances of success increase significantly.
Final Takeaways
- Start small. Target innovators and early adopters first, demonstrate success, and then cross the chasm.
- Approach the change holistically, across all six enablers.
- Maximize your chances of success by having senior leaders drive the change.
- Ensure all changes are consistent, coherent, and coordinated.
Thank you so much for listening. I welcome questions, and if you'd like to get in touch, I’m happy to continue the conversation after this session. Thank you for having me, much appreciated.