20 years ago, people didn’t understand what transformation was, and an organisation certainly wouldn’t have had a permanent transformation director in their company.
Now, people understand the requirement for a centralised transformation area, and it’s almost unheard of for a company not to have a transformation director.
This means that transformation maturity inside organisations has grown. People now have a better understanding of how to deliver transformation projects.
As a result, organisations are looking to build more internal talent to deliver business transformation. Our recent survey on transformation showed that 62% of companies wanted to build more internal transformation capability.
Building internal talent
Companies are now investing heavily in their own transformation teams, and therefore are looking to hire experienced interims or permanent talent rather than the more expensive management consultants.
Organisations know that it takes a specific skill to deliver a big transformation project. What they don’t want is internal people without these skills going into these special projects.
Rather, if an organisation knows what they need, they can go to the market and cherry pick someone with the right skill set to help deliver the transformation. It’s a stronger alternative to management consultants, who are likely to offload anyone from their bench into the company, and who may therefore not possess the right skills to succeed.
Embedding a legacy
Everyone is going through change; transformation is becoming a constant within all businesses.
Building internal capability provides a more cost-effective solution. It means the next time you go through transformation, you don’t have to hire as many interims as the first time around.
It’s also a great opportunity for your employees from a personal development point of view. Individuals crave a new challenge, and this way they are going to acquire new skills and be part of new learning, coaching and development.
The interim’s role
Organisations need interims to train and work with your permanent staff to deliver transformation. What you get are interims acting like a shadow worker, so the permanent people are at the forefront of anything that goes out but are supported and coached by the interim. The materials that an interim can bring then get owned by the company afterwards. So the next time you need to update your systems or respond to a new change, you'll have the people and tools in place to deliver.
With change now a constant, organisations need to find cost-effective ways to deliver transformation. And building internal capability, through internal training of permanent staff and support from interims, helps embed a legacy of continuous growth and success.
In our Business Transformation Survey 2018 we looked at how buying has matured, how transformation teams are structured today, who the major sponsors and organisers are, and how businesses are engaging their employees in transformation. To download your copy of the report, click the link below.
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