Over history there have been tens of thousands of frameworks, matrices, tools and methodologies designed to convince the technology and services buyer of one thing - transformation. In my journey down the catacombs of transformation, there is one reality that I have encountered very often - the fabric of transforming businesses, processes and technology are as much science as they are art with probably no right answer. The key to transformation is to understand that, no matter how we wish everything would be done by a machine with zero error and to perfection, businesses are inherently dependent on human intervention; and increasingly so with the intermediate and end customer becoming increasingly aware, and therefore, demanding.
One of the painful truths of transformation (barring very few and rare exceptions), as it is sold today, is the fact that traced over long periods of time things tend to return to status quo (of course adjusting for newer market scenarios). The reason for this, and the central bane of all transformation efforts, is that transforming any business, large or small, is generally driven by some agenda that is smaller than a future view. In the current market place where results are measured quarter-on-quarter and organizations are reorganized based on internal political affiliations, true transformative perspectives are generally lost in the pursuit of short term gains and eagerness to align to quick performance gains. Because, like to or not, saving some money today without a view of the future generally leads to more problems than it solves as you get there.
The other bane of transformation initiatives, and I would go so far as to pin the root cause of the mushrooming profession of consulting. No one can tell how an organization can be run leaner and more efficiently that the people running it. Like every human being is different (at a genetic level), every organization is different and unique in terms of their DNA. Best practices and frameworks are not much more than sales tools and attempts to homogenize the world. If you take two organizations who sell the same service to their end customers and get best practices from each to the other, the outcome is almost the most certain way of killing any differentiator and/or core competency - you cannot be the best at Customer Satisfaction and have the lowest Cost of Customer Care operations at the same time! Don't let the consultants convince you that a scenario of Low Cost and High CSAT in a customer care operation is possible.
One of the painful truths of transformation (barring very few and rare exceptions), as it is sold today, is the fact that traced over long periods of time things tend to return to status quo (of course adjusting for newer market scenarios). The reason for this, and the central bane of all transformation efforts, is that transforming any business, large or small, is generally driven by some agenda that is smaller than a future view. In the current market place where results are measured quarter-on-quarter and organizations are reorganized based on internal political affiliations, true transformative perspectives are generally lost in the pursuit of short term gains and eagerness to align to quick performance gains. Because, like to or not, saving some money today without a view of the future generally leads to more problems than it solves as you get there.
The other bane of transformation initiatives, and I would go so far as to pin the root cause of the mushrooming profession of consulting. No one can tell how an organization can be run leaner and more efficiently that the people running it. Like every human being is different (at a genetic level), every organization is different and unique in terms of their DNA. Best practices and frameworks are not much more than sales tools and attempts to homogenize the world. If you take two organizations who sell the same service to their end customers and get best practices from each to the other, the outcome is almost the most certain way of killing any differentiator and/or core competency - you cannot be the best at Customer Satisfaction and have the lowest Cost of Customer Care operations at the same time! Don't let the consultants convince you that a scenario of Low Cost and High CSAT in a customer care operation is possible.
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