Why a Flawed Business Transformation Strategy Stalls Real Progress.
There’s something about a quick win that feels great. You automate a small process, save a little money, or take two days off of your reporting cycle and everyone seems to breathe a little easier and feel like there’s been some progress. It feels like you have made progress. It looks like you’ve succeeded. However, sometimes I wonder if that feeling is causing more damage than we’d like to admit when executing a business transformation strategy.
Quick wins by themselves aren’t a problem; they can help create momentum and build confidence. Where the problem lies is in what happens next. Many companies have diverted their strategic direction away from the main issues and pointed towards the quick wins as their new strategy. For instance, teams begin optimizing based upon the speed of delivery instead of focusing on what really matters; A dashboard can be updated three times, yet the underlying data problems are still unresolved.
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I think back to a retail client that we assisted recently who had made a sizeable investment in improving their online checkout process. Did their conversion rates increase? Yes. Were customers still frustrated with fulfillment delays? Also yes. The additional conversion rate improvements didn’t mean that they had resolved the supply chain issue; it simply meant that the quick win had overshadowed the global supply chain problems.
On the other side of this discussion are the challenges faced by leadership. They are often under pressure from their boards to show results quickly and their boards expect to see evidence that they are making progress on their transformation initiatives. Quick wins can serve as a benefit by helping you buy some time, but they are best viewed as signals, not as solutions.
Where a grounded approach can help is by asking the questions of “What did we not fix?” after every quick win. This question will tend to change the types of conversation taking place; it will help move the discussion away from what is happening at the surface level to focusing on what the structural issues still exist.
Let’s be real, progress looks nothing like it’s painted to be. It tends to be slower and somewhat messier than we would like it to be. Therefore, resisting the urge to celebrate a quick win too soon, may be the difference between a transformation that shows results on paper versus one that stands the test of time.
