From change management to transformation platforms
Once upon a time there was a stable and predictable world where transformation projects were developed according to the "3 x 3" rule: the management committee met for 3 days in a seminar to define a vision, the company's experts had 3 months to translate the vision into a roadmap, and the managers had 3 years to implement it.
Yes, but that was before!
The digital revolution has changed our lives. It has disrupted entire economic sectors without warning, making winners and losers. It has also changed our relationship to change: today, change is continuous. No one can seriously believe that they are no longer protected from the emergence of new uses, the emergence of a new competitor, or simply from a transformation of their profession as a result of the development of robotization and artificial intelligence.
This acute awareness of continuous change explains why "old-fashioned" change management no longer works: how to adhere to a 3-year plan if I don't know what tomorrow will bring?
It is also a fantastic opportunity to rethink approaches to emerging change. Rather than imposing a vision, we advocate the creation of "transformation platforms". It consists of bringing together employees from the same team or profession to co-construct keys together to "do well" in a constantly changing world. In concrete terms, within these platforms, members share: information on what is moving in our context (new uses, new technologies...), insights on "what is changing for our company / our business", inspiring and remarkable initiatives, feedback on innovative experiments.
In terms of tools, social networks can be a powerful ally of these transformation platforms: they make it possible to accelerate the speed of information dissemination and facilitate exchanges in a very free way.
Of course, the launch of a transformation platform also requires a minimum of upstream work with the management team. In particular, it must be able to share with employees its reading of the changing context, in order to be able to explain why it wanted to launch this platform.
For example, we have implemented transformation platforms in recent years at France Télévisions: 4 years after their launch, they are still active, without external animation, and allow members of different editorial departments to share how they reinvent their profession as journalists.
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About the author:
Edouard Tessier is founder of Anakao, a company specialising in organisational transformation consulting. Edouard Tessier, a graduate of HEC, began his professional life in the world of microfinance, mainly in Africa, as a project manager and general secretary of an NGO. He then joined the IDRH firm for ten years where he was in particular Associate Director at IDRH, in charge of the "transformation" practice.
