A transformation never fails because there are opponents, but always because there is a lack of allies.
The challenge is therefore to conquer, federate and support those who will agree to implement the project. To trigger this commitment to transformation, four pillars must be brought together:
Share meaning, give one’s place to everyone, generate desire, foster trust.
SHARE MEANING
The first pillar of any transformation is the notion of meaning. A transformation project is often launched after weeks or even months of reflection by a few. The project is then presented to the impacted teams as obvious… Which is precisely not obvious! It is necessary to share this rational to allow these teams to appropriate the meaning of transformation. The fluidity of the transformation will depend on this appropriation.
GIVE ONE’S PLACE
What scares me the most in the transformation is the feeling of losing my bearings, of losing what made me exist within the organization. When the transformation is brought from the outside and imposes itself on me, I have the feeling of undergoing it and I resist. Everyone must be able to find their role in the transformation to get moving. And this cannot be improvised but must be thought upstream: what place will we give to everyone in the construction of the transformation?
GENERATE DESIRE
It is not enough that a transformation makes sense and that there is a place for everyone to generate committment. However, this transformation must make teams want to get involved. Contrary to what is often thought, desire does not come from the apparent ease, but rather from the challenges to be met together to achieve a better situation.The project must therefore federate around a collective ambition, like a summit that we decide to climb together by tying ourselves together to support each other.
FOSTER TRUST
Who would be willing to engage the best of himself in a context of mistrust? No one. Trust must therefore start by being given to the teams. Through concrete signals of letting go, management must show teams that it trusts them to engage in transformation. This trust, offered a priori, will in return promote the confidence of the teams in the transformation project.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE CONSULTANT IN THE TRANSFORMATION?
The role of a consultant is neither to do instead of managers, nor to stay away to give instructions on what they should do.
He must get into the boat with the teams, and in particular with the managers, to teach them to navigate with precision in the transformation and thus allow them to quickly become autonomous to make it sustainable.
A consultant has succeeded in his mission when he can leave it as soon as possible and observe with his customer that what he helped to initiate continues in his absence. This is why I favor short-term interventions which allow a more frequent inventory of the results obtained.