"If you're going to implement any kind of transformation, make sure it's worth your while, right? If you're doing a digital transformation, do something spectacular that's going to make a significant difference to the business. Otherwise, you really got to ask yourself, is all the upheaval that you are going to put people through and all the money you're going to spend, is it worthwhile?"

Intro:
Welcome to the Agile Digital Transformation Podcast. Where we explore different aspects of digital transformation and digital experience with your host, Tim Butara, content and community manager at Agiledrop. 

Tim Butara: Hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Our guest today is Lisa Carlin, strategy execution specialist and scale up mentor and co-founder of Future Builders Group. They're a network of organizational development specialists. 

In today's episode, we'll be discussing how you can design successful strategies and build internal communities within your company, within your enterprise in order to drive change. 

Welcome to the show, Lisa. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a real pleasure having you here with us. You want to add anything before we dive into the conversation? 

Lisa Carlin: No, that's all good. Lovely to be here, Tim. 

Tim Butara: Awesome. Well, as I said, thank you again for joining us, Lisa, and excited about this conversation. And I guess a good thing to start with would be to discuss how does not embracing and not planning for change affect firms' digital transformation, or just digitalization efforts?

Lisa Carlin: Well, Tim, you might know that the failure rates of digital transformation are really high. So many of the listeners will have seen statistics from McKinsey and Harvard Business Review. It's right up there around 70% plus failure rates. And so, you know, if you were going to get on a plane and you knew there was a 70% chance of it crashing, would you get on the plane, right?

So, we really need to do everything we can to mitigate the risks of failure and to ensure that it's been, you know, that it'll be a successful transformation and that the money and the time that people put into it is, is paid back and they get an ROI, return on investment on that, on that time and that money.

And it's even more important for digital projects because they cost a lot more than other types of transformations. So you might get transformation of like Salesforce or culture or some process changes or restructure. They're all different types of transformations. But when you do a digital transformation, it usually includes some of those aspects of cultural and behavioral change, process change. But you've also got a whole bunch of technology changes. And those often will be bigger projects that will cost more and maybe even take longer. 

So because of that complexity, you really, really want to make it successful and really need to think through the change quite holistically. So I recommend looking at four different areas. One is the business itself and the focus of where you're going. Second of all is the people change aspects. Third of all is the project management, project governance, to give you traction. And fourth is the culture and making sure you really understand the environment that you're working in to make sure that your initiative can be as successful as possible.

Tim Butara: Yeah, that was a fantastic intro. Some great points here. Basically, with any transformation, change would be inevitable. And with digital, because you have all these technologies that are being developed, that are being innovated on, change becomes even more inevitable, also because... you also mentioned that often these projects take longer, and transformation is just by default something that implies a longer term timeframe, rather than something that happens instantly. 

And within the longer term timeframe, even if you're not living in as disruptive as times, as we have been experiencing for the past few years, some change would definitely be inevitable. And you would need to incorporate that into all of your strategizing basically. 

Lisa Carlin: Exactly. Exactly. 

Tim Butara: So yeah, we already discussed the key elements of strategizing for change, right? The key four pillars. Can you just quickly go through them again just to remind our listeners about them? 

Lisa Carlin: Yes. So imagine you are going on a road trip or you're relocating between two places. Let's say you're going from New York to San Francisco, right? You need four ingredients for that journey. 

You need to know where you're headed. Right. So A, you know, the GPS coordinates, the address, name, whatever the, you know, exactly where you want to head. You need some people to come along the journey with you to, you know, feed you, navigate you, you know, give you some fuel and maybe keep you company. 

And then the third ingredient, well, you'll need some, the actual infrastructure to get you there. So the vehicle, the roads, that sort of thing. And the fourth one is the environment that you work, that you're going to go through the terrain, if you will. 

And those are the four elements for any kind of transformational change. So you've got where you're headed is basically the business strategy or the gives you the precision of the outcome that you want for for the change or the transformation.

Second of all, it's the people and the change management. So it's how you're actually going to get there and building up that momentum with the people around you. Third of all, it's the project management or project governance, which is like that infrastructure, if you like, the vehicle and the road, right? The mechanics of how to get there and give you that traction to go from New York to San Francisco. Did I say San Francisco or LA? Anyway, wherever we're headed. 

And then, fourth is the environment. So what's the terrain like? What's the culture like? What's the personality of the company that you're working within? So that... or company or organization, so that you can adapt everything you do to fit in with that organization, because if you don't, as a transformation leader, whether you're an IT director, driving the transformation, head of PMO, program manager or business executive, you are going to need to get that kind of enthusiasm, muster that momentum and take everybody on that journey with you.

Tim Butara: I'm glad I repeated the question even though we kind of already went through them because I loved that more detailed breakdown and the very tangible analogy because, you know, especially for a lot of listeners from the U. S., there have probably been occasions where you've had to plan such trips, you know, from maybe not from one coast to the other, but longer trips where you had to incorporate all of these different things. 

And if any one of them went missing or if you forgot to consider even one of them that probably drastically affected the entire journey and everything. So it's awesome because it's something that a lot of people can relate to. 

Lisa Carlin: Great. 

Tim Butara: So maybe if we focus on a particular element here, why is the organizational culture so important here? 

Lisa Carlin: Yeah, look, that's a wonderful question, and I see a lot on culture, written a lot about culture, and it's usually about how to change culture, and they don't talk about how to actually work within a culture that you've got.

If that transformation leader or business leader or IT director or PMO head, I'm just going to call them transformation leader, generally, if they don't work within the culture, then they actually have a high risk of actually being sidelined in the organization, or even asked to leave and laid off altogether or spat out.

And I've seen that happen to, particularly to new executives that come in and try and lead an initiative and aren't really attuned to how the culture works, they will not be accepted. They will not be listened to. And even if they are, many of the listeners will find that, you know, there's just a lot of politicking and inertia in trying to get through a digital transformation. It's very pervasive and people hang on to the old ways. 

So I always say culture can be a prison or playground for innovation. Right? So you can either have- work along with that culture and find the sweet spots of the culture and then work with it. So, or otherwise, you get all that inertia and that resistance.

So let me give you an example, because I think it's best explained through an example. If you have a very risk averse culture, and many large organizations can be risk averse, where they are worried about trialing new things, and then, you know, making an investment and then publicly, it's not, it doesn't go well, right?

So, if you're in a very risk averse organization, you need to play to that and really turn it into a strength rather than an issue. Because then you'll know that people are going to be worried about new things and they want to take things slowly and carefully. So if you can chunk it down, so part of the agile approach, of course, is to take things in sprints and small, bite sized chunks that makes it easier for everybody.

And if you can do that work in that way, and the way that I usually operate is a modified agile, which basically is using the agile concepts and breaking things down into small chunks, that way you can mitigate the risks of failure because you're not failing on a very large scale. 

So same with a business case, instead of putting in a business case to do a massive chunk of very expensive work, you might be able to chunk it down into, for example, a feasibility stage or a pilot or something like that to make it easier for the stakeholders to sign off on. 

So in that way, you're modifying your approach, your change approach, your project management approach, and your business strategy or outcome. So all those first three elements that I spoke about, you're modifying that to the culture that you're in. 

And I'll give the listeners a link to my 17 top transformation tips in your show notes. And in that you'll see a diagram with those three circles in a Venn diagram, and then they're all sitting in a bigger circle. which says culture. And if you can get that right, okay, if you can get those three elements right and attuned to the culture that you're in, that's where you've got that playground effect rather than that prison effect, right? That's where your culture is working for you rather than constraining you. And that's when you've got that flywheel to ROI and innovation. 

Tim Butara: I love this approach of modified agile because I was thinking that if you tried to apply agile in a super rigid way, then that would not only defeat the purpose of applying agile, but in a lot of cases it would add complexity to digital transformation initiatives and projects.

But if you do it in the approach that you just broke down, that's, I think to me, that's agile implementation that makes the most sense in the context of, you know, strategizing for change, incorporating disruption into your strategizing and all that. 

Lisa Carlin: Yeah, it's funny because my sister's a developer and she talks to me a lot about her work and she lives in a different country to me and she's had that development background and project management background and she's always going off to a stand up meeting and talking about the sprints and, you know, talking about the retrospectives and all the terminology around agile.

And you can do Agile without using those, you know, a lot of the clients that I work with work in a very small A agile way rather than a capital A Agile methodology. And don't use necessarily the terminology, but work in a very flexible way with smaller chunks of work done at a time and a lot of interaction between people in the project team regularly. And a lot of looking at, you know, improving the way things are done for the next time around. And you can do that without the agile jargon. Yeah. 

Tim Butara: Well, I dare say that if the jargon itself is the only benefit of using the jargon, then you might as well not use it, right? If it only adds, you know, a feeling of we're doing agile while you're not exactly doing agile, then you might as well drop the jargon, even in that case.

Lisa Carlin: Yeah, it's funny you should say that, Tim, because, I've been working in this space for over 20 years and I've done the courses or read the manuals of all the, you know, the different methodologies of PMBOK and PRINCE2 and, yeah, and Agile and, so all of that, and then plus all the change management approaches and, yeah, Prosci, ADKAR model and all of that. 

A lot of the branded methodologies are variations. And a lot of the management theory that I come across is sort of a branded, rebranded version of something that's come before in a slightly different way with a slightly different emphasis. So I get a little bit cynical when I see, ah, the brand new way to do ABC, because in fact, a lot of it is, is a version of what's come before with a slight nuance to it. 

And that's why I've developed this membership for transformation leaders, which is called Turbocharge Your Transformation. And if folks Google those three words, turbocharge your transformation, you'll find the membership.

And, for folks who are transformation leaders. And we are methodology agnostic because, you know, whatever methodology the organization uses, it will be a version of, you know, something that has found the most acceptance in the culture of the organization. 

And if that works, that's what the organization should be using. And then you overlay on top of that, the strategies. And the, you know, the capability and skills in transformation so that you can make it all successful, whatever, you know, methodology you've got, because at the end of the day, it's not going to be the methodology that makes you successful, is it? 

Tim Butara: Yeah. And it's not going to be using the terms and the jargon, but it's just going to be applying the agile mindset and helping employees apply the agile mindset and helping, you know, your internal teams embrace. all of this rather than fight against it or just do things for the sake of doing them, which as we've already pointed out, can lead to, you know, if you just break down a certain process into sprints or something, because you feel like you need to, without actually considering how that affects your whole strategizing and your ROI and your people and everything, that might be detrimental. 

And also, I love the point about, you know, so many of these methodologies and approaches just being rebrandings of each other, but it's also rebrandings that come with a certain artificial exclusivity or something like that, right? If there's a new framework that you don't know is very similar to something that you know, there's this sense that, oh yeah, only experts in this can be experts in this.

So you need to become an expert in this without realizing that, oh yeah, you may already be really good at it just from the other approaches that you're experienced in and the other principles that you followed and kind of adopted. 

Lisa Carlin: Exactly. And that reminds me of something that I always say to people that are asking, you know, can we help them with, advise them around a transformation; if you're going to implement any kind of transformation, make sure it's worth your while, right? If you're doing a digital transformation, do something spectacular that's going to make a significant difference to the business. Otherwise, you really got to ask yourself, is all the upheaval that you are going to put people through and all the money you're going to spend, is it worthwhile?

You know, so if you're implementing, you know, new workflow, for example, make sure it's significantly better. If you're going to implement a new ERP system, make sure it, again, it's significantly better than what you had before. You know, you're not going to just do it because it's the new new thing out there and you like, you know, people are talking about something and therefore, you know, it sounds like a good thing to do to stay relevant.

You ought to make sure, especially organizations that have got, still got legacy systems in there, and they're going to turn upside down the apple cart to implement something because it's cloud based, for example, rather than hosted on premise or whatever the change is. And you've got to make sure that it's going to be significantly better and worth everybody's while.

Tim Butara: Yeah, because change just for the sake of change is just the same as disruption for the sake of disruption. And it just can't have a good impact on your people, and consequently on the stuff that they put out, whatever it is, whether it's, you know, physical products, digital services, whatever. 

Lisa Carlin: Exactly. And you'd be surprised how many organizations start off by looking at something new because it is new and because it seems to be the trend, you know, take cloud for an example. 

Tim Butara: Well, you know, actually from all of the conversations that I've had here, I myself wouldn't even be that surprised because it just makes sense. You know, it's like these shiny new things that are so attractive and typically have really great marketing behind them that you're just like, oh, you know, why shouldn't I try it? And, you know, maybe I myself really like it, then why shouldn't everybody else that I work with and work for and work above also like it?

Lisa Carlin: Exactly. And you must see, you know, a huge amount of that at Agiledrop when people ask you for, you know, to put programmers on, I would imagine you would see a lot of that. 

Tim Butara: Well, I'm not that deep in the weeds. I'm not a developer here at Agiledrop. I only do marketing. So I'm not that involved in like particular client projects.

And, even if I were, I wouldn't be, I probably wouldn't be able to disclose many specifics regarding that. So, yeah. It's definitely something that's widespread across the board, you know, even if it's, even if it just... but I guess I dare say that at Agiledrop, we'd also probably try to do a little bit of consulting in this sense, like trying to figure out if a particular shiny new technologies is actually right for you, or if maybe a tried and true approach would work better or maybe if even if no change would work best for your particular use case. 

So I think that we have a very, very dedicated and careful and also proactive approach to collaboration, right? It's not just about, oh yeah, well, we might do something, then we might fix it if it doesn't work out. 

We'll try to do as much planning and kind of foreshadowing and foreseeing in advance, you know, to see if a new solution actually makes sense. You just mentioned, it has to be significant enough in order to implement it, right? And I guess that's what we would also try to help our clients figure out, if it is significant enough.

Lisa Carlin: Fantastic. That sounds like a real value add. 

Tim Butara: In this same context, so how could companies, like, promote internal collaboration, provide support environments for their employees where they feel psychologically safe to collaborate and to produce their best output possible? 

Lisa Carlin: Well, a large part of getting that right positive environment is to invite people that can contribute into working groups, cross functional working groups.

So right at the beginning, as you're developing the approach to the transformation, is that you're getting people involved. Potentially people who are close to the customer and understand the customer problem or other parts of the organization. And by asking people, inviting their input, that gives an enormous sense of importance, those people feel important and valuable. And they are more likely to be supportive of that system implementation down the track as well. 

So that co developing concept, it's very core to the the approach that I have. I always say to people, get out of the dark room, you know that dark room that people sit in away from everybody else, come up with all the solutions and then they go out and announce them and people, you know, don't always have the engagement and the buy in because they weren't involved. 

So get out of the dark room and get involved, involve people from the rest of the organization, invite them in. I've got a 5D model, five steps to implement a culture friendly digital strategy. So if you Google that, it's on my blog. And so there are five Ds that are part of that. And one of them is developing the solution with others. So that's pretty important step. 

Tim Butara: One thing that really comes to mind here is, like, if the people that you include, if the teammates that you include know that you're including them for a specific person, how can you include them and ask for their feedback in such a way that you'll know that the feedback you receive and the views that they give, are genuine, rather than maybe what you want to hear because maybe you're a senior or you're a leader or you're a CEO, you know what I mean? 

Lisa Carlin: Yeah. So what you've referred to, Tim, is a interview technique. And setting up a psychologically safe environment where people can give their honest, authentic views. And there really is an art to that. A real art to that. And, starting with, you know, the right broad questions before you go specific, the order of the questions, the way you develop the rapport with people, whether you do it one on one or you do that in groups so that people feel absolutely comfortable.

There's a whole raft of techniques that I teach people or I guide them, if I teach them in the membership or I guide them if I'm mentoring them to make sure that they consider, and those are just a few.

Tim Butara: Well, actually, since we're already talking about this, could you share some of your favorite success stories from your work? 

Lisa Carlin: Sure. So maybe I'll pick two. I'll describe one that's in a smaller organization and one that's in a bigger organization. Let's start with the big organization. So this was looking at implementing a whole lot of efficiencies in a strategic review. And part of that was a significant digital transformation around productivity software, collaboration software, and workflow. And the organization had some significant goals around efficiency and they wanted to improve their margin significantly as a result of this. 

So what we did, it was a very siloed culture in the business. So each division was quite sort of separately run and the executives that ran each division, which was like their kingdom almost, you know, they focused more on that division than the rest of the organization as a whole.

So we needed to make sure that each division's voice was heard. And that's a really important part of working in a culture that is siloed. So what we did was we ran workshops within each division to do the co design process so that the ideas could bubble up from the division specifically. And they were something that the people in the division felt very attached to.

And I was going to say in a cynical way, surprise, surprise, you know, they weren't that different. They maybe used different terms or approached the problem from a slightly different, you know, explanation or reason, but the things that they wanted were quite similar. 

So when we, as a core team, so I was running the program or project, a group of projects, and we had a core team of about eight of us, we were able to pick things that resonated across a number of different divisions, but still not need to be able to create a new project for every single division. Right? So we took lowest common denominator or common themes, if you like.

And the project was a wild success. Each of the different sub projects, or let's call it a program. Each of the different sub projects in that program were incredibly successful that when we celebrated success at the end, not only did they achieve their financial targets, but people were so invested in the projects that they took a significant amount of their time out of business as usual to work on these working groups, which already means, you know, it's a success because people are committed to it and are driving it as part of their day jobs.

And we had 120 people across the organization representing all the divisions and all different parts and geographies. We had 120 on the video conference to celebrate success at the end because, you know, they all personally wanted to be there and be part of that. So that gave us a lot of leverage from that core project team of just eight people. 

So that's the one example in a big organization. And, if I just step back and look at what made it successful, it was that co design approach that matched the culture. And what that does is it creates that pull effect. Rather than pushing people to do something, you're doing it with them, change with people rather than to people. And you get that pull effect. And I always say, you can't get to the unicorn zone by pushing harder. People try push, push harder, work harder, more time. You've really got to create that pull effect, all the people pulling in the same direction.

So, that's one success story. Shall I move on to another one in a small organization to give you a sense of what that could look like? 

Tim Butara: Yeah, that would be awesome to kind of have a tiny bit of contrast also. 

Lisa Carlin: Okay. So, this was an organization that was venture capital funded. And while I was working for them, they doubled in employee numbers every few months, it was growing that fast. So they were in four countries when I started working with them, and they needed to have a new strategic approach, a growth plan and a structure for international global expansion. 

And the CEO was a unusual personality who ran the business with a very, let me just say, a very firm hand and had very strong opinions of the way things should be done. And, you know, was willing to just take people along that journey, you know, kicking and screaming if necessary, like literally just push, push, push and get that growth. Cause that was his, you know, his bottom line.

So he wanted me to come in, the CFO and the CEO, they wanted me to come in and test the ideas there, but it was actually quite difficult to do. And that's why I always think of this example when I think of success, because it was very difficult. The CEO was so strong in his own views that, although he'd asked somebody to come in to give him an independent opinion, he really didn't want his view to be changed. He knew what it was and he wanted somebody to help kind of put some, I guess, some color and detail to it so that it could be implemented or verified, I guess.

They had their technology product that was... because the business was growing so fast, they had a lot of growing pains around the consistency of the product and the service that they were delivering, and too much of it was bespoke. So when he was expanding globally, what he wanted was he wanted product divisions with folks based in different countries that they were going to expand into.

And he wanted product divisions because he thought that the most important thing at their point of growth was the consistency of the engineering and the customer success, the service support functions, right? 

When I looked at it, I realized that they were in four offices already, and they were going to multiply out really, really quickly. And given their presence in each country, they were going to need a really strong salesperson. They could get over their consistency issues, their product issues relatively quickly, but they needed to have a strong presence in the country that represented the country and represented the sales function.

So I explained to him that if you did the one approach, right, which is the product divisions, he was going to land up with a result that he would very quickly have to reorientate his thinking, very quickly reorientate and restructure again to structure into country roles. 

So he first did not want to hear a word I said, but what I did was I explained to him, if you want this particular outcome, which is the fastest growth possible with the least amount of upheaval of people, right, and he would agree to that, then he could see very clearly at the speed that we're growing, that to get there, the structure that he originally thought was not going to get him that result and instead he needed to structure in a country and sales head manner.

And so, that was the example. I mean, the business went on, he accepted my recommendation, it was implemented and, you know, years later, the business is now a very successful global story, it's listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with businesses in over 30 countries, and it's a leader, it's a market leader in their segment.

So very great success story, but just sort of shows you, you know, that you've got some folks that are very close to the problem and they've got in their heads a particular view of what they want and they call in folks like myself, so, you know, strategy execution specialists to kind of test their ideas.

And what I've learned from that is I always say to my clients, I will give you my honest view. And only work with somebody like me if you are, you know, if you're happy to work with me and listen to those views. Otherwise, I'm not the right person because I'm not going to just tell you what you want to hear.

Tim Butara: I can totally see why you chose that example. And I actually, I made a note for the first example that you gave, but it applies even better for this second one, which is the paradox of thinking that by letting go, you'll lose control. But in both of these cases, It was very clear that by letting go, you'll actually have more control over the successful development of everything than if you'd just like strictly stuck to the way that you chose and to the way that you thought would be working. So awesome, and awesome notes to finish this great conversation on, Lisa.

Lisa Carlin: Fantastic, Tim. I'm glad. 

Tim Butara: Before we jump off the call, before we say our goodbyes, if listeners listening right now would like to connect with you, learn more about you besides all the great resources we'll include in the show notes, where would you point them to?

Lisa Carlin: They're all on our website, which is futurebuildersgroup. com. So you'll find, under the resource page, the articles that I mentioned, you can sign up to my weekly free newsletter called TurboCharge Weekly, and there's also a tab which describes the TurboCharge membership, if that's of interest to people.

Tim Butara: Awesome. Lisa, thank you again so much. I think that this was a great conversation and we did did a great job of showcasing how you can design successful strategies and how you can build communities internally in order to drive change properly without too many upheavals and with significant benefit. Thank you. 

Lisa Carlin: Thanks Tim.

Tim Butara: And to our listeners, that's all for this episode. Have a great day, everyone, and stay safe. 

Outro:
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