Design your transformation to produce the specific results that your business strategy requires. Your organization’s business outcomes are the driving forces catalyzing—and defining—the changes your organization must make to succeed. Make your business outcomes clear and tangible as you initiate your change effort, and ensure that everyone in the organization understands that they are the reasons why the changes are required. Your business outcomes are the foundation of your case for change, and give your change effort relevance and meaning.

Your transformation must have a change strategy guiding it, and your strategy must be designed to deliver your desired business results. Remember that change strategy outlines the three com­ponents of your change: the content of what needs to change, the people issues that must be addressed for the transformation to succeed, and the process of how all of this will take place. Your change strategy should integrate both your content and people initiatives through one unified process, and address the unique challenges of this transformation.

Your change strategy should orchestrate all of the changes hap­pening in your organization as a unified transformation. All of the change efforts underway should fit into the larger picture, and be planned, designed and implemented accordingly. Attempting transformation without a clear change strategy ensures failure, just as creating multiple, unintegrated change initiatives will doom your overall effort.

Transformational change has two distinct dynamics that make it unpredictable and much more complex than other types of change: (1) You must begin the process of changing before your destination is fully understood and defined, and (2) The scope of the change is so significant that it requires your leaders and employees alike to change their mindsets and behavior in order to succeed in the future state.

Command and control as a change leadership style does not work well with these core dynamics of transformation. You can­not force people to willfully march into the unknown, nor can you command them to change their mindsets and behavior. Only when people participate in creating their new future, and internalize the importance of doing things differently, will they willingly support the transformation. Consequently, transforma­tion requires a new leadership style, one that maximizes partici­pation, communication, shared decision-making, and attention to what is best for the overall enterprise. Developing this “co-creative” change leadership capacity throughout the leadership ranks is critical.

Given the complexities and volatility of transformation, you will need the right kind of tools for the job. Choose and master a change process methodology—like the nine-phase Change Leader’s Roadmap—to use as your navigation system for plan­ning, designing, and implementing your change. Do not depend solely on project management methodologies or static change frameworks to guide your effort. Alone, they are inadequate tools for the job of transformation.

You cannot manage transformational change as a controllable “project” with a predetermined outcome or timetable. You can intentionally plan some important change activities, yet many show up as unpredicted and emotionally challenging dynamics that emerge as you proceed. Remember that you are discovering what your ideal future state needs to be as you go. Therefore, change leaders must constantly gather new information and learn from what is actually happening in the organization, then course correct their change process and timetable accordingly. They must observe and respond to the emotional roller-coaster happening as the change unfolds. Project management tools are too linear, prescriptive, and task-oriented for this need, and change frameworks do not provide enough process guidance regarding what to do when. Prepare yourself with the right resources!

You can only formulate your change plans and timetable to the degree that you have an accurate scope of what the transforma­tion entails and what aspects of your organization and work­force it will impact. Ensure that your leaders consciously attend to both the marketplace and organizational factors (the external reality) and the human factors (people’s internal reality) that are direct factors in the success of your transformation. Internal dynamics like leadership mindset, culture, and employee atti­tude and commitment are as critical to your success as the more tangible marketplace and organizational factors such as technol­ogy, organization structure, or government regulations. Be sure to assess the entire organization and its human dynamics to determine your scope.

Transformational change requires that both your leaders and your entire workforce undergo a shift of mindset from old worldviews and ways of thinking to new perspectives and atti­tudes required for your business success. A critical mass of peo­ple must operate from the new mindset and culture for your future state to be realized and sustained. The most important building block to achieve this critical mass is for your leaders to begin the change effort by addressing their own mindsets.

Drive the mindset change effort with your business needs, and design it as a long-term, ongoing development process, not just a discussion or a training event. You can address mindset most powerfully in the context of working groups focused on how to make the transformation successful. These groups can be com­prised of either people from across hierarchical and functional boundaries, or individual leadership or work teams. Your trans­formation’s success must be the reason these groups are engaged in mindset work. Individually oriented, personal growth workshops not tied to the business needs will not suc­ceed.

Employees get their primary clues about whether the organiza­tion’s espoused changes are real from two key factors: (1) the change leaders’ behavior, and (2) the change strategies used to achieve the transformation.

Your leaders’ “walk must match their talk.” In order to build employee commitment, the change process and the behavior of the leaders in charge must reflect the desired mindset, behavior, culture, and norms of the future state, not the old organization. Furthermore, since the leaders’ mindsets directly shape the change strategy and process used, you must address their mind­sets early in the effort in order to achieve this modeling. It is far tougher for leaders to maintain the level of influence required to compel the workforce to change if they have lost credibility.

The magnitude of transformational change requires a critical mass of your organization to act and work differently. Maxi­mum participation can help you create this critical mass of pos­itive contributors, and engage people in owning their future!

Change leaders maximize people’s understanding, buy-in, and contribution to transformation—and minimize their resis­tance—by engaging people early in the change process. This means during initial planning, design, and impact analysis, not just during implementation. Be sure to share and request infor­mation freely, use multi-directional communication strategies, and allow for local control of local decisions to mobilize buy-in and create the critical mass of commitment you need.

Successful transformation requires certain conditions, such as: (1) clear direction and understanding of why the change is nec­essary, (2) adequate resources, (3) adequate time and attention for change activities, (4) executive alignment, etc. Identify and create these conditions up front to increase the probability and accelerate the speed of your success. If the needed conditions are not in place, then make building them an early priority of your change strategy. It may even be better for you to delay your kickoff until you have the proper conditions in place, rather than proceeding without them and getting off on a weak footing. Establishing and maintaining the proper conditions for success requires action and oversight, not just lip service. You can demonstrate enormous leadership commitment to the change through the early and public establishment of your con­ditions for success.

Align all aspects of your organization with the requirements of your desired future state, including the tangible (external) ele­ments of strategy, structure, systems, business processes, mea­surements, and rewards; and the internal human dynamics of mindset, readiness, and culture. Make sure this alignment also includes all of your stakeholders, customers, and vendors. Everyone and everything about the organization must pull in the same direction to optimize your required outcomes.

In other words, the current transformation is not over until all elements of your organization that impact the intended business outcomes are realigned to produce and sustain those outcomes. For example, if the main focus of the transformation is new technology, simply installing that technology is not adequate. You must also realign the related systems, structures, cultural norms, skills, etc. to ensure that your people use the technology properly to produce your desired business outcomes.