Increase your impact, measure your transformation readiness
TLDR: By measuring your transformation readiness, you can make more targeted interventions to promote sustainability. This way, you increase your impact.Â
Starting point: sustainability strategy Â
In September, we held two workshops on sustainability for a client. Within their holding company, sustainability was put forward as a crucial development that all organisations need to address. The message got through, but where to start? What exactly is sustainability, and how does it relate to our business models? Can we develop ideas to take a step forward? Â
Transformation readinessÂ
To best support them, we first assessed their transformation readiness on three levels, inspired by regenerative leadership:
- Vision for transformation
- A transformation-ready organisation
- Transformation-ready colleagues
From years of experience in organisational change and innovation, we know that successful organisations not only have a clear vision of where they want to transform towards (1), but also work on their organisational structure to support the change (2) and give all their colleagues the mental space to adapt (3).
Insights
Each participant completed a questionnaire that revealed the organisation's strengths and challenges related to transformation. Participants' perception of the organisation was consistent:
- There is still (too) little knowledge about sustainability and awareness of its impact.
- The organisation has a solid foundation for transformation.
- Colleagues are constantly in action mode, which can hinder change.
Key learning points on transformation readiness were:
- Time is needed for reflection - to bring the subject matter to life and we need to make sure that everyone has time to "check out" from the daily routine and focus fully on the content.
- We need to broaden the stakeholder base to see both positive and negative impacts before analysing the business model.
- By involving nature in generating ideas, we can come up with new and different ideas.
Greater impact
We designed the two workshops based on the organisation's transformation readiness. To maximise impact, we leveraged their strengths (e.g. organisational aspects). In some areas where improvement was possible, we did the opposite of what they were used to (rest & reflection, broad stakeholder analysis, nature-inspired idea generation).
A month and a half after the sessions, participants reflected positively on the impact of the sessions:
- Sustainability has come to life considerably, and activities within the organisation are now viewed from a different perspective.
- Participants also started working on sustainability at home, by greening their homes or changing their behaviour.
- More colleagues need to be involved, and sustainability needs to be rapidly integrated into customer processes.
What is your transformation readiness?Â
Do you also want to accelerate your progress in transforming to a sustainable organisation? Then contact Pieter by sending an e-mail to: pieter.vanderboog@elementalstrategy.com
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