A woman walks into a virology laboratory as a visitor. She notices a group of people in their white lab coats looking deeply into their respective microscopes. She gently taps on the shoulder of one of them. As he lifts his head and turns towards her, she apologetically says, “Sir, I don’t mean to interrupt you but I am curious. What’re you working on?” The man, seemingly not too happy, replies with a frown, “Don’t you see what I’m doing? I’m counting these stupid cultures.”
The woman thanks him and turns to another man in the lab doing exactly the same as the first one and everyone else there and asks the same question: “What’re you working on?” The man enthusiastically responds: “Thank you ma’am for asking me. You see I’m part of this team here that is finding a cure for covid.” With a big smile, he wishes her a good day and goes back to work.
What’s the difference between these two men? The answer in one word is Purpose. If you want to transform your organization for the better, a top secret to your success is to build an army of covid curers rather than culture counters.
Organizational transformation—not a destination but an endless journey
Organizations must transform themselves one way or another to stay alive, let alone thrive, to cope with change. As change is happening relentlessly, you have no choice but to transform incessantly. Transformation is not a destination, it’s an endless journey. Staying competitive means staying in a state of perpetual transformation.
IBM shed its image as “Big Blue” selling blue tinted main frame computers and morphed into a behemoth IT services company in the mid 1990s. In 2010, it decided to transform again to become a provider of cutting-edge technologies including AI, cloud, IOT, digital, blockchain, etc.
Corning, a serial innovator and a Fortune 500 company founded in 1871, shifted its focus from encasements for Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamps to PYREX® cookware, silicones, cathode ray tubes, TV picture tubes, optical fibers, LCDs, and smartphone glass covers through a series of transformations.
In a series of blogs, I will reveal, not necessarily in any order of importance, the top six ‘secrets’ to the success of organizational transformation. These are the secrets I’ve discovered over the last 35 years of my professional life working with more than 40 Fortune 100 companies; teaching at elite academic institutions like the University of Chicago; and lecturing on project management, leadership, and innovation in nearly 50 countries.
Let’s start with secret Number 1 to the success of organizational transformation: PURPOSE
Know your purpose
Let’s face it, every organizational transformation starts as a project. And every project must start with a clearly defined purpose.
Project teams as well as the sponsors often focus on the ‘what’ of the project. That is, what the project is supposed to produce as a deliverable(s), for example, a product, service, or an event. But the key is to first start with a clear understanding of the ‘why.’ It helps us identify the real purpose.
Digital transformation projects are sweeping across all industries, government, non-profits, NGOs, and so on. My experience shows that many leaders are unfortunately focusing on digitalization (the what) rather than the value it’s expected to generate (the why). You don’t want to digitalize because everybody else is doing it. The purpose should be to deliver greater value to your stakeholders through competitive advantage created by digitalization.
Many of today’s projects driven by digital transformation, AI, machine learning, etc. are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). In the VUCA world, it’s easy to lose direction. But purpose serves as the North Star.
Think outside in
You need to think outside in rather than inside out to get to the core of your purpose. The purpose is always about creating value for the stakeholders. It’s often more about your external stakeholders (for example, customers, community, planet, etc.) than the internal ones. You must dig deeper and keep asking the question ‘why’ to identify the true purpose.
Are you constructing a church or offering a place of worship for the community? Are you building a park or providing a playground for the neighborhood children? Are you developing a new medical device or are you helping to extend and improve people’s quality of life? Are you increasing shareholder value through innovative products or are you decreasing the carbon footprint by incorporating sustainability into your processes and products? I can go on.
Keep it simple and make it easy
‘Keep it simple and make it easy’ has been my mantra for a long time. Consultants seem to make things more complex than is necessary. Maybe because they want to look smart or maybe they want to feel like they’ve earned their money. (I know a little bit about this, because in my previous life I worked for a consulting company.)
A global project management expert and the author of the recently published Harvard Business Review—Project Management Handbook, Antonio Neito-Rodriguez suggests using the term purpose instead of ‘mission and vision’. He opines that the differences between the latter terms are often misunderstood and, albeit popular, confusing and made up of fancy words developed by consultants. I agree with him. So, how about keeping it simple and making it easy?
“Why’re you working so late?” President Kennedy, according to legend, asked a janitor during his visit at NASA’s headquarters in 1961. “Mr. President,” the man apparently replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” Wow, the janitor really knew his purpose.
Communicate the purpose
Communicating the purpose behind your project is critical. Purpose is a key driver in inspiring the team towards greater performance.
Take for example, the Manhattan project team in Los Alamos, New Mexico, who built the atom bomb, euphemistically known as ‘the gadget.’ Initially the scientists and engineers were not told what they were working on for security reasons. Their technical leader Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, noticed that the work was going rather slow, especially considering the talent and skills of his team members.
He hypothesized that if his team knew the real purpose of the project, they’d be inspired and productivity would increase. He convinced the reluctant military bosses that they must unveil the secret to enhance team performance. And once the team knew they were building the gadget that will stop the war and change the world, everything transformed—just like Feynman hypothesized.
According to Feynman’s calculation, team productivity increased by 10 times. It must be correct; after all, it was a calculation by none other than one of the greatest geniuses that ever walked on our planet.
Build excitement around the purpose
The first rule of building excitement is to be excited yourself. As leader of the transformation project, you must believe in and be enthusiastic about the purpose. You must vehemently communicate the purpose with passion. Steve Jobs at Apple, Louis Gerstner at IBM, and Satya Nadella at Microsoft are masters at this. They transformed their respective companies in extraordinary ways.
A few years ago, I co-founded a decarbonization company, NeoChloris, Inc. We develop innovative technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In the early days of founding the company, I’d get up at around 4:30 in the morning and be in my office by 6:30 am. My family wondered why I needed to go to work so early when I’m my own boss. My answer was, “We’re fixing the world. We can’t waste time.” That’s my purpose. It inspires me. It gives me motivation to go to work. It’s a great reason to inspire my team.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a start-up working with a small team like in my case or a behemoth organization with a large team. It’s paramount that the leaders get on their bull horn to communicate the project’s purpose and get their teams excited about the meaning of their work.
Today, thanks to the pandemic, purpose has become even more important. Working from home, putting in long hours with work/life border lines blurring, going through covid fatigue, and even becoming attacked by covid in some cases, people are realizing what’s truly important in their lives.
There’s a new phenomenon in the Unites States being dubbed as The Great Resignation. People are quitting their jobs by the millions. You have to wonder why. It turns out one key reason is they feel their work is mundane; there’s no meaning, no purpose.
Make it “a mission from God”
A Roman Catholic orphanage is about to close unless it can collect $5,000 to pay its property taxes. Two brothers brought up in the orphanage set out to raise money to pay off the taxes, while being chased by the police for all kinds of traffic violations. This is the basic plot behind the 1980 iconic movie The Blues Brothers starring the legendary John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. The purpose of the brothers’ project is epitomized in their motto: We’re on a mission from God.
If you can make even a mundane project look like a mission from God, you have great potential to become a transformational leader.
In the next blog of this series, I’ll share with you secret number 2 to the success of organizational transformation.
Ashish says
Inspiring! Purpose drives us everyday, but is an unspoken factor in daily life. Definitely should be more open about it.