In some of the recent discussions with my fellow coaches, we shared some thoughts on what coaching is and is not. I have jotted down my two pennies worth.
COACHING IS A JOURNEY.
Coaching is many things, and most importantly to me, it is a journey.
Imagine you as the coach is in a car with your coachee, where the coachee is in the driver’s seat taking you to a new destination. He/she has the complete control on the final destination, direction to take, and speed to move forward. In this journey, the coachee will experience up-and-downs, traffic jams, rainy days, and even detours. You are there for the coachee throughout the journey – accompany, support, encourage, challenge him/her to reach the desired destination but not to steer the wheel on his/her behalf.
As a coach and throughout the journey, one needs to maintain curiosity and neutrality, listen actively and ask powerful questions to elicit introspection and insight and help your coachee to see new perspectives and hold him/her accountable to evoke changes.
COACHING IS NOT COUNSELLING.
I have come across scenarios where the terms of ‘coaching’ and ‘counselling’ are used interchangeably. This is a big ‘no-no’ and coaching is not counselling (also known as psychotherapy).
Some key differentiating factors are listed below:
It is important to point out that these are guidelines and the terms may have different definitions and meanings in different cultures.
One of the analogies is to think of a coach as an athletic trainer and a counsellor as a medical doctor specialising in sports. Whilst they share similar knowledge of anatomy, kinesiology, nutrition, the trainer focuses on improving fitness and performance, and the team doctor mainly treats injuries.
Whilst a coach may explore the coachee’s past to understand the client’s present and future, it is important is that a coach does not diagnose nor offer treatment. The coach needs to make a referral to the appropriate professional when the help their client needs go beyond their experience or qualifications. In the same analogy, the athlete needs to be referred to the team doctor if there is reason to believe he or she has an injury.
COACHING IS NOT CONSULTING, NOR MENTORING.
Human beings are born problem-solvers. Being a consultant for most of my career, I was well aware of the differences between a consultant and a coach at the beginning of my coaching journey. Consulting is where we leverage on an expert’s expertise to understand a particular problem and present solutions, and consultants provide their specialist opinions and advice to resolve professional or technical issues. This varies greatly from pure coaching, where the coaches do not provide any opinion and answers come from the coachees.
A mentor is experienced and trusted subject matter expert with knowledge in a particular field, who can share their experiences and provide options to help others to move forward. On the other hand, a coach is an expert on the development of people in general, he/she does not need the subject matter expertise to help the client.
Digital transformation refers to a journey of digital enablement that accelerates business activities, processes, competencies, and models leveraging on the opportunities brought by digital technologies. It is a culmination of coordinated, scalable change efforts diffused throughout all aspects of the business. To impact society in a prioritized way involving strategic moves by data-driven insights and digital business models allowing new ways to capture value by meeting customer expectations.
Digital Transformation has become a common buzzword used with vendors, third party suppliers and consultants. As the Digital Era continues to progress, the challenges for both leaders and organizations are increasing as transformation involves the integration of social and digital technologies into an organization’s operations.
Many CIOs are making sweeping organizational changes, reskilling employees, setting up innovation labs and experimenting with emerging technologies to meet strategic mandates issued by their CEOs and boards. The CIOs & strategic heads try and balance costs with value delivery bringing new skillset with a new workplace culture that changes rapidly through a dynamic strategy.
A Forrester Consulting research study done by Accenture Interactive shows that the key drivers of digital transformation are profitability, customer satisfaction, and increased speed-to-market.
WHY DO WE NEED IT IN FIRST PLACE: IDENTIFYING CURRENT PROBLEMS FACING ORGANISATIONAL HEADS?
It’s an exciting new era in Business Transformation, with major technology changes ahead. For example, an engaged finance team can elevate finance to an intelligence-led strategic instrument of growth and profitability for the enterprise. To achieve that new capabilities are essential. CFOs are increasingly beginning to invest in building skills such as predictive analytics, scenario building and experimentation which rely on humans trained on new technologies and data-based insights. Delivering those experiences requires proactively addressing the challenges presented by different regions, device types, and digital platforms.
Digital transformation provides a valuable opportunity for core business functions, such as finance and HR, to move away from manual processes and automate key areas like payroll, enabling leaders to focus on wider business opportunities. Rather than marginalizing workers, the influx of technology brings a new level of empowerment and engagement.
CHROs have a lot to grapple with the fact that AI will impact 100% of jobs as it becomes embedded into the workflows that make up those jobs. Therefore, the CHRO has to address a certain amount of fear and uncertainty present in the workforce. They must shift in day-to-day work patterns to an agile working method.
Many CEOs find it challenging to navigate the world of social media, which is growing 24/7daily and here to stay. And the COOs have to look into intelligent workflows that eliminate barriers in operations making organizations more responsive, reduce waste and identify new business models by connecting the dots between real-time operational events and work schedule.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO EMBRACE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?
Digital disruption today has become the order of the day. Technology is fundamentally changing business and life in profound ways in breadth, depth and scale and, importantly, at an exponential pace. Businesses are now forced to rethink the way they organize themselves.
Since 2000, 52 per cent of companies in the Fortune 500 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist as a result of digital disruption (Harvard Business Review, July 2017).
To improve business processes and develop new capabilities and business models’ businesses across the globe are forced to digitally transform. In this economic reality where all industry sectors are disrupted, actionable intelligence has become the new currency. Companies find it difficult to innovate and grow due to fragmented technology landscape, constant product evolution and changing consumer preferences.
There is a lack of agility and insufficient competencies and a learning-friendly culture to generate innovation. Organizations have always worked with lines drawn around technologies, functions or processes. Try as they might want to optimize within these silos, the output is never quite as satisfying as it could be. There is an absence of self-assessment gauges that help assess the company’s delivery approaches balancing digital experience with web security. The results and recommendations will provide insights into your organization’s readiness for digital business success.
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Google, Amazon, Facebook and such tech giants are driving high-quality digital transformation in consumer experiences making it difficult for digital companies deliver high customer expectations. There is an innovation barrier that needs to be crossed with new roles and action areas to be spearheaded Learning & Development (L&D) team who will act as a change agent, consultant and shaper of innovation culture. Especially in this VUCA environment, many leaders are struggling with promoting and maintaining safe and supportive work environments.
Businesses are not fully understanding customer needs and consumers are not giving businesses credit for the level of investments the companies are making. Digital transformations failing is often due to poor leadership, major disconnects between IT and the business, sagging employee morale and substandard operations, according to a report from MIT Sloan School of Management on digital transformation.
A research study was conducted of 800 executives and 800 consumers, across four industries banking, retail, utilities, and healthcare concludes that $4.7 trillion in investment dollars have yielded little improvement, of that only 19 per cent of consumers reported any significant improvement in the experiences offered to them. Then a $5-trillion question arises whether digital transformation budgets are well spent?
A QUICK REVIEW OF FEW KEY INDUSTRIES ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
The ultimate challenge in change management happens to be Digital business transformation. It impacts not only industry structures but affects all levels of an organization. The leading companies have agile, customer-focused ethos recognizing that digital transformation is a cultural change, not just a technological change. Let us examine Finance, Media, Chemicals and Insurance industry trend.
As businesses of today are trying to adapt to Digital Era realities. The global banking industry is yet to realize financial returns from their digital transformation investment of over $1trn in new technology in the last three years. The analysis shows that the finance sector can automate 80 per cent of today’s transactional processes with the creation of an intelligent finance system creation. CFOs are trying to invest in digitally savvy finance teams along with chief human resources officer (CHRO). Together, they are trying to create a future-forward finance capability defined roles and empowering employees with intelligent technologies. As the nature of finance work changes, so will the makeup of the finance-related workforce.
Media and Entertainment industry emerges as a clear winner in the engagement game constantly evolving from your iPod Shuffle to iPhone XI. According to a PwC study, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and Internet advertising will see the most annual growth. It’s expected that digital revenues will account for over 60% of total revenue in the media and entertainment industry by 2023. The global entertainment and media (E&M) industry revenues are expected to reach 2.6 trillion by 2023. China’s absolute growth in the entertainment and media industry is expected to exceed that of the United States with India coming third.
Digital technology also holds a tremendous promise for the Chemicals industry in driving its business value. The requirements in the process industries, oil & gas and chemicals in particular, are very different than in general manufacturing. The value drivers of process industry many of them are centred on improving work efficiency and avoiding incidents. For example, the use of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology to allows personnel on-site to contact remote experts about problematic plant equipment with the use of 3D printing use the “freedom of design” to improve the part.
Last year alone, more than $4 billion was invested in Insurance technology, and continuing to increase. Most focused on ensuring good user-experience. When a prospect becomes a customer, the carriers try and engage them further in new ways. Similarly, the acceleration of the underwriting process has been on machine learning and AI with chatbots and virtual digital assistants.
TECHNOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIVING
Artificial intelligence systems have tremendous ability to comb through vast amounts of customer usage data and effectiveness of sales techniques and marketing strategies in search of useful patterns and other insights. Their study involves sales and marketing data not only from the end-consumer standpoint but also to determine the effectiveness of sales techniques and strategies themselves. Delhi air quality is one of the most talked-about issues, with innovative use of technology such as cost-effective IoT sensors across the city attached to street light can help measure and report air quality.
When today’s customer gets into an Uber he does not need to verbally communicate with the driver. The technology does all the work for him from directions to billing fare. Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) airport check-in has set the benchmark making air travel so easy, comfortable, seamless and paperless.
Another example is the popular Airbnb which uses technology to facilitate sellers and users across the world to a come into comfortable arrangements without the search cost. Customers have now started expecting the same kind of experience that they have with technology in their personal lives in business too. Research by Walker predicted that by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the main differentiator. As Millennials and Gen Z have become the majority of workers, they bring a desire for purpose-driven work.
87% of customers measure all products and services against Amazon and Starbucks (Wunderman, 2018)
Organizations have woken up and are increasingly deploying agile hybrid IT services and agile networking and getting the user experience right as a critical part of business transformation. Involving both usability’s of applications for external customers, as well as for internal employees through IT training and upscaling capabilities.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS HOLD THE KEY TO FUTURE
Since competition within the industries is extremely fierce and demands from customers forever increasing, the organizations are now getting increasingly reliant on each other, be it suppliers, distributors, sub-contractors or specialized consultants, producing a diverse range of products and services that interest customers. As managing these partners requires document-based communication, a process which was earlier viewed as time-consuming is now faster through technology. A streamlined workflow transparent, timely and accurate with an eSignature system is used.
The businesses that thrive in the future will be those that reposition themselves to deliver seamless, satisfying experiences through the perfect mix of human and machine intelligence. Intelligent workflows are right at the heart of this evolution towards becoming a Cognitive Enterprise.
DEVELOPING NEXT-GENERATION LEADERS
In this digital era, many roles that exist today won’t exist in the future. And the new roles that no one has yet envisioned will emerge. Without a crystal ball, CEOs must invest in continuous learning for their team. Employees need to be rated according to their mastery of new skills rather than how much time they put into the learning process. In many cases, this accelerates the whole procedure.
A comprehensive workforce strategy will unleash new sources of value, greater speed and agility, and the creation of more valuable strategic services for the business. While new technologies remain an impetus for change, the number of leaders who expect customer experience to drive change in their organizations jumps nearly three-fold. 55% of customers are willing to pay more for a good experience (Think Jar, 2017).
Next-generation business is looking at the convergence of technology like artificial intelligence (AI), automation, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and 5G to reshape business architecture. An evolved Enterprise transforming from the inside-out bringing together data, smart people and technology together.
LEADERSHIP TRIBE UK I USA I INDIA I CHINA I SINGAPORE I UAE I
We are present in all 5 continents having clients and partner offices in more than 15 cities in over 7 countries, we have a truly global perspective plus the ability to collaborate on particular matters with international consulting firms. Please contact us to see how we can help you and your business:
LEADERSHIP TRIBE: HOW ARE WE HELPING ORGANISATIONS?
1. We enhance your leadership skills to create and lead business transformation initiatives in your organization.
2. Equip you with the understanding of strategic drivers of digital transformation, data, analytics and, technology, to lead your organization to grow.
3. Help you to build the capabilities to understand the business frameworks for value creation and innovation to lead transformation initiatives for a sustainable competitive advantage
4. Advice on AI leverage to provide personalization and effective compelling customer experiences.
5. Apply AI to increase efficiency and effectiveness to your core business process.
6. Apply Deep learning models for better decision making and deriving insights
7. Building fluid work structures with cross-functional teams to promote autonomy and exponential learning
OUR SERVICE OFFERING:
We offer a wide range of consulting, training and coaching services to help our clients to build their internal capability and deliver their business transformation. The following are the typical areas we have helped our clients:
STRATEGY FACILITATION AND BUSINESS PLANNING
We help our clients to plan to achieve their vision and objectives. We also advise on the appropriate processes, practices and tools on demand.
ORGANISATION DESIGN
We help our clients to identify dysfunction in their structures, systems and workflow and help them to become agile and customer-focused and develop plans to implement the new changes.
OPERATING MODEL
We work with our clients to streamline and restructure the way they do business and deliver value. We help client’s lower costs, build greater resilience, and improve performance.
ACCELERATED AGILE TRANSFORMATION
We help our clients to plan and execute Agile transformation. We assess their Agile maturity and readiness, address challenges and assist transformation with appropriate consulting and training.
TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION
We uplift our clients’ ability to learn, progress and innovate through IC Agile-accredited classes as well as certification courses in Agile, Design Thinking, Building High-Performance Teams, Leadership Training, etc.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
We help our clients develop sustainable change and lasting results, achieve the required business outcome and realise envisioned benefits.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE (PMO)
Our PMO practise helps the client to establish, lead, facilitate and deliver transformation programs.
CONSULTANTS ON-DEMAND
We help our clients to reduce the cost and risk in their transformation journey by helping them to source the most suitable candidates with the right skills and fit for the organization.
MENTORING AND COACHING
We help the client’s team to acquire new knowledge and skills, embed them in practice, and enhance the overall performance via mentoring and coaching.
TRAINING FOR LEADERS
Understand the big-picture context for digital transformation efforts and identify maturity level and find a digital strategy on track for the long term.
TRAINING FOR TECH LEADERS
Dive into technologies that are driving digital innovation-cloud computing, big data and data science, machine learning and AI, blockchain, and IoT.
Help transform mindset shifts at organizational and individual levels. Increase digital literacy and learn how to work and collaborate in new, more productive ways.
We also give support on the learning path with numerous other courses related to digital transformation, including agile project management, change management, design thinking, and how-to courses on today’s digital collaboration tools.
You can drop us a line on hellouk@leadership-tribe or reaching us through contact us
Companies Need to Build Agility & Resilience into Their Business or Risk Being Left Behind
Technological innovation is playing a massive part in how businesses operate and indeed what it takes to be a leader in any given sector. With investors scrutinising performance like never before and the landscape of many industries changing at breakneck speed, many companies that ignore this change to continue to operate as they have for decades, risk being left behind by modern-day disruptors.
Despite the need for companies to remain agile to respond to keep pace with these industry disruptors, almost half of those asked have been slow to react to these new threats, with some even being completely passive. Where this stance is likely to be most keenly felt, however, will be on the balance sheet, as investors are much more likely to scrutinise poor performance since the crash of 2009.
STAYING PASSIVE ISN’T AN OPTION
Organisations who find themselves in this position cannot afford to ignore change, as their future existence could depend on it. Building agility and resilience into their businesses is key to being able to react quickly to changes in their industry, which means that ‘business as usual’ planning just won’t cut it any more when it comes to countering new industry threats and making the most of new opportunities that present themselves.
A RESILIENT AND ADAPTIVE MINDSET
The first change that needs to occur within an organisation is the will to change and embrace new ways of working. Accepting that the status quo within any given industry can change and that a company needs to be ready to respond quickly is a major step in the right direction. This change in philosophy involves being ready to make use of new tools, such as dynamic data analytics that provide insight into what customers what and where their concerns lie.
EFFECTIVE PLANNING
The next step that needs to be realised is a platform being created for a company to be able to demonstrate their agility and react if an industry crisis or polar shift were to occur. This involves targetted planning, to reshape how said companies operate and in many cases, this can require a radical alteration in strategy. However much resistance to change there is within an organisation to this change, the CEO needs to see it as an operational necessity and implement accordingly.
TAKING DECISIVE ACTION
Making data-driven decisions, interacting with stakeholders, stress-testing and taking a forensic view an organisation’s structure is the vital third step in a company’s journey to achieving agile transformation. Only by taking decisive action to legislate for future challenges and disruptors can a company accurately call itself agile, as expecting it to happen by itself will not achieve the necessary optimisations that need to take place.
IN SUMMARY
To stay competitive in this ultra-competitive, almost constantly changing business landscape that exists today, CEOs need to take the concept of agile transformation seriously can give it the necessary amount of focus. Only by stress-testing their business model in a range of possible scenarios can companies understand the likely impact that changes can have and how quickly they can respond to them.
In these uncertain times, CEOs must prepare themselves to compete in all kinds of new ways and reinvent themselves where necessary. Fail to do so and the chances are, they’ll eventually be overtaken by those who can and left behind for good.
Learn more on how you can bring agile transformation to your organisation
The communication landscape is different than it was 20 years. Two main factors are defining your organisation’s success while designing an amazing digital transformation. They are the human touch and connecting the business around the customer.
As the adage goes “the experience employees feel is the experience they deliver”.
While the majority of organisations and managements think of digital transformation as changing the technical aspect of the business but digital transformation begins with the employees and the customer – the human aspect.
According to Canon research, 78% were willing to improve the employee experience by adopting digital transformation in contrast to the 55% of businesses which opted to focus on customer experience.
When both the internal stakeholders (employees) and external stakeholders (customers) as internal users and actual buyers get involved in a digitalisation project, the more likely a digital transformation will succeed.
EMPLOYEES ARE ALWAYS THE KING
It becomes impossible to shift the organisation’s practices and processes without onboarding the employees. Inculcating positive guidelines to the teammates helps in creating a harmonious working environment essential for better output. Change of management, therefore, forms a critical parameter for a successful digital transformation. Focus is on creating and cultivating a culture that encourages a digital mindset, a motivated workforce will be well placed to drive an organisation’s digital transformation process into digital maturity and help elevate the organisation to the ranks of a digital leader.
The leadership landscape has changed into collaboration and teamwork. Organisations need to provide their teams with new capabilities, tools, technologies and mindsets to drive new behaviours and outcomes. Organisations and their executive management should learn to trust their teams can make decisions. Organisations should help all team members visualize the future and prepare for the changes. Training should be a way to help people feel confident and ready to do their jobs with the new systems. Employees to be encouraged to think like customers. Employees too have many experiences as consumers which might help the company identify and participate in more innovative solutions.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS THE KEY TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
It has become imperative to design customer processes and touchpoints to provide a unique and personalized customer experience for every single customer that you have. Great features or price no longer holds power. It is the “memorable experience factor” determines the business winners and losers. Businesses must prioritize optimizing their websites and apps to deliver positive, experience-driven customer engagement.
According to a recent survey from Oracle, as I quote :
81% of customers are willing to pay more for superior customer experience.
89% of customers switched brands after poor customer experience.
20% of annual revenue is lost due to poor customer experiences.
93% of executives say improving customer experience is one of their top three business priorities.
Can you describe the customer experience at your company?
THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF PROCESS AUTOMATION IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
No matter which industry you are in, you would surely find an increase in the use of process automation. Instead of humans, software bots mimic our activities and intelligently interact with applications. They effortlessly complete tedious tasks, working as a virtual business assistant, freeing up more time for the leadership and employees to focus on more innovative, revenue-generating tasks.
PROCESS AUTOMATION A KEY DRIVER FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Process automation has brought on a complete metamorphosis, with future-ready businesses. It has successfully dismantled the traditional siloed ways of business operation. Automating workflows, infrastructure, back-office processes which are labour intensive, and repetitive tasks are handled by the virtual workforce. More importantly, it has gifted leadership with enough time and space to think and come up with ideas, valuable initiatives and formulate actionable strategies.
A combination of algorithmic, natural language processing and machine learning capabilities have allowed organizations to automate task just like people across application and systems. A study by Deloitte in 2017, shows 53% of organizations have started RPA processes, increasing to 72% by 2020 and reaching a near-universal adoption by 2022.
UNLOCKING THE VALUE OF THE INVALUABLE DATA
An overwhelming level of data and insights are available in today’s digital world. Utilizing these vast new flows of information can help your organization, as they provide astute insights into critical elements of the business. A key aspect of analytics technologies and deep learning is that they rely on data, and the more data, more accurate and meaningful are the insights.
The world is gradually shifting towards open systems and open data. Organizations and businesses that leverage open data will dominate the future. Leaders are now challenged to find ways to overcome current organizational boundaries, and deciding how to assign and share data among departments. Also to spot new trends and work to ensure that data is used to its fullest potential.
MAKING THE JOURNEY CUSTOMER CENTRIC
The customer experience landscape is changing rapidly so knowing how to operate in it is becoming a key priority. In a study by McKinsey over 70% of app users preferred added functionality over “look and feel” of any app. Automation is therefore here to stay and enhance human activities enabling higher value delivery, speed and innovation.
Successful leaders pursue digital transformation by launching an integrated operating model organized around customer journeys. The starting point would be to begin the process of developing an agile digital delivery system within a cross-functional team.
A TRANSFORMATIVE STEP-UP
Process Automation is becoming increasingly refined with groundbreaking technologies and smarter with time, introducing minimalism in place of myriad complex processes. The advent of disruptive technologies has brought in speed and cost optimization elevating business processing centres on the technology curve.
BPA can be applied in different departments within an organization, such as operations, IT, sales, marketing, business development, human resources, legal, financial and administration departments. Business process automation involves automating the recurring tasks of a business process rather than doing it manually.
Let’s examine a manual and an e-purchase order process. A manual PO process tends to have problems, incorrect data entry, or delay in documentation etc. It is also time-consuming as it involves manually raising a purchase order requisition, then going and getting approvals from various departments, verifying the order and raising invoices before getting final approval. As compared to an e-procurement system, where purchase requests are digitally initiated, routed to the appropriate stakeholders for quick approval. Making it much easier to use and e-process, as all its computations are automatically handled.
THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF PROCESS AUTOMATION
That would be to improve the work environment for people who are the driving force and not to replace them. As a leader your task is to ensure that all of the team and staff understand this fact, enabling people and machines to interact more naturally.
In the end, it is a human analysis that provides real value and contextual insight. There is also a clear need for organizations to empower the workforce by creating an exponential Agile learning environment.
Are you interested in learning more? Stay tuned. We shall try to clear some of the common misconceptions in our next blog. Meantime, invite you to read some of our recent blog posts and share your comments.
You can drop us a line on hello@leadership-tribe or reaching us through contact us
