Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don’t Lose Your

Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don't Lose Your Nerve!) - HBR.org

Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don’t Lose Your Nerve!)
by Robert H. Miles

ABOVE Michel de Broin, Révolutions, 2003, Aluminum, 5 x 5 x 8.5 m, Maisonneuve-Cartier Park, Montreal Web Exclusive: Special Section on Reinvention Ask any CEO who has overseen a corporate transformation what should have been handleddifferently, and you are likely to get this answer: “We should have—and could have—moved faster.” Such executives have a long list of regrets: They wish they had unified the leadership team right away. They wish they had engaged employees sooner and quickly drummed up support for
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the new vision. They wish they hadn’t waited so long to test their assumptions and refine their key initiatives. And they wish they had generated some visible returns early on, to accelerate the commitments and reinforce the expectations of employees, customers, suppliers, and investors. Any corporatetransformation—launching the next major phase in an organization, executing a new corporate strategy to achieve breakthrough performance, enabling a new executive leader to take charge, or integrating an acquisition—is fraught with challenges. More than 25 years ago, I began chairing an innovative program that convened groups of CEOs and their executive teams for two-week sessions at Harvard BusinessSchool, where they collaborated with faculty members and noncompeting peers on solving their most serious challenges. They met again nine months later to share their experiences. Within a few years, a clear pattern emerged from the program: The biggest barrier to corporate transformation was getting organizations to execute their bold new ideas quickly. Since then, from my direct involvement asprincipal process architect in more than 25 corporate transformations led by new and sitting CEOs, I’ve concluded that many talented executives don’t fully appreciate the following subtle but powerful insights: • Transformation launches must be bold and rapid to succeed. Yet, embedded in

most organizations are six kinds of “speed brakes” that can slow things down to a grinding pace. • Duringbusiness-as-usual periods, these brakes may be irritating, but their effects on performance

are reasonably benign. However, during a bold transformation, which requires rapid action, any one of them can derail the larger effort. • To accelerate transformations, managers need to release each of these brakes, in a

particular order. Let’s examine the different types of brakes and discuss how and when torelease them.

Speed Brake #1: Cautious Management Culture
When companies pursue variations on the same business model for an extended period of time, they
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Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don't Lose Your Nerve!) - HBR.org

become preoccupied withincremental improvement. Rather than teeing up big ideas and targeting big results, executive decision makers try to avoid big mistakes. They hunker down in their respective areas of responsibility, believing they are too busy with daily operations to get involved in reimagining the entire business. The problem is, transforming an enterprise requires intensive cooperation among executive peers. Strongtraditional units have to share resources with unproven or underperforming units, and often they must sacrifice something they value for the good of the whole. An incremental, parochial mind-set also affirms the traditional executive pecking order. Those who control the most resources or institutional assets tend to monopolize discussions, trump new ideas, and strong-arm decision making, thereby...