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Hello, I'm Dominic Klemmer,
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managing director and partner from the Cologne office
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and a core member of BCG'S Transform team.
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Today I'm welcoming Reshma Ramachandran.
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She's a seasoned transformation expert,
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having worked for ABB, Adecco,
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and many other companies.
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Reshma, we know that 70% of transformations fail.
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What do you think are the key success factors
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for the ones that really work out?
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That's a very good question.
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As you rightly said, 70% of transformations fail,
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which is a massive number in that sense,
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considering that almost all of the Fortune 500 companies
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are today undergoing a transformation.
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So from both being a person who has led transformations
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and now being on the other side of the board
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where I have a perspective
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to see transformations differently,
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I would say there are three key critical success factors
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to any transformation.
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The first and foremost is the "why."
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Why are we transforming?
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So every organization has ambition to transform
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because, as I said, you can't afford
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to be in the status quo, but you need to articulate the why.
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Why are you transforming?
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And along with the strong why,
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there needs to be a very clear strategic direction.
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What's the direction you are actually undertaking
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to transform the organization.
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The second I would say with a strong why
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needs a clear alignment within the leadership team.
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So when I say the leadership team, it's CEO minus one.
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The CEO needs to be a hundred percent
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behind the transformation.
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You need to have the CEO minus one
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200% behind the transformation,
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and then engage with the top leaders.
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Maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 2% of your top leaders.
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Make sure that everybody sings the same tune.
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And the last, and probably not the least
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is communicate, communicate, and communicate.
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There is literally no over-communication
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in any transformation.
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You said that the CEO and the full leadership team
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need to play a central role in any transformation.
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So how can it really become one team?
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It's a very good question.
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And you know, my personal point of view is
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that in any transformation, any successful transformation,
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the real chief transformation officer is the CEO.
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And to come back to the question
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on how the tandem should be established
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and how a right and successful tandem works,
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is the CTO is always an extension of the CEO.
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So the articulation, the drumbeat, the governance,
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making sure that the organization
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stays on the strategic direction chosen,
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the employee engagement,
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everything is orchestrated by the CTO.
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And that's the only way
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that strong tandem can be established.
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What is your perspective about the leader journey?
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What do you mean with it,
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and what should be done to make it successful?
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So you have the leader journey,
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you have the program journey,
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and you have the people journey, and it's a triage.
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All of these needs to come together
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for a transformation to be successful.
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So starting with the leader journey,
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why is the leader journey so important?
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Organizations do not transform in a big bang.
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It is actually a personal change
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that actually gets reflected as an organizational change.
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And the change always starts at the top with the leader.
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So that's why the leader journey is important,
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and how can we successfully engage in the leader journey
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is where leaders are personally committed to the change.
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Where leaders are personally standing behind the why
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of the transformation and where they're able
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to articulate that why from a personal perspective,
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and the storytelling becomes very important.
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It has to come from deep within.
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What needs to be done to really ensure
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that it trickles down, that you have transparencies?
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So this brings to the people journey part of the triage.
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And this is also where the diversity of thoughts
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are so important.
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So how can you actually unleash that human potential
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in terms of bringing in the innovation,
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bringing in a different perspective to problem solving?
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That is only through transparency.
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And that is why I'm a strong believer
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that you have to slice and dice the elephant--
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which would be the transformation--
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slice and dice the elephant into multiple pieces
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so that each person in the organization,
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each individual in the organization really understands
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what he or she can actually bring to the table.
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Problems are never solved in headquarters,
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problems are actually solved,
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especially when you talk about customer problems,
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it's not in the headquarters where the problems are solved,
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it's actually in the frontline
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where the problems are solved,
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where you are actually seeing the problems
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and you can come up with creative solutions.
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What's the role of digital, of AI,
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for today's transformations?
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Now, I think where we are extremely being disrupted
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as a world is around the artificial intelligence,
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machine learning, generative AI.
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So I do believe that digital and technology
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in that sense is a critical lever to transformation.
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And some of the transformations that we have seen
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in the recent past is actually how do you leverage
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the digital technologies to help your company
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or an organization actually deliver more value
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for the customers, more value for the greater good?
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Think about sustainability, for instance.
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The whole technology has been able to give
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a completely different dimension
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to the sustainability solutions.
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Organizations that are on a transformation
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needs to look at it from a perspective of saying,
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"We are transforming, and how can these technologies help us
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in taking the transformation to the next level?"
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So, again, going back two decades ago,
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if the lever of a transformation was cost out,
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if a lever of transformation was supply chain optimization,
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I think we need to look at it from a different lens
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and say today the biggest lever
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we have on our hands is digital.
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So in any transformation, make that lever,
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or bring that lever, to full life,
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and that way you can actually also deliver
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much more benefits on the transformational side.
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Thank you very much, Reshma.
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Thank you so much for having me,
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and let's continue to transform.
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(soft ambient music)