CHIEF TRANSFORMATION OFFICER — Your Transformation Isn’t Failing. Middle Management Is Neutralizing It

Read time: 2.5 minutes

6 Important Realizations to Make as the Chief Transformation Officer

1. Your organization’s transformation process isn’t failing; it is being blocked from happening.

• Your mental image is clear.

• The result you want to achieve is not visible yet.

Fact: your organization is working against the transformation process.

2. You do not have a change management issue.

• Employees are not actively resisting your organization’s transformation.

What you have is:

A misalignment between strategy at the top and execution at the bottom.

3. Strategic change comes from the top, but execution never changes at the bottom.

• Leadership publicly announces a strategy.

• Employees on the front lines continue to execute as they always have.

Why? Because the middle of the organization is the only place where senior leaders’ strategic change can be turned into executed change.

4. Middle management is doing exactly what middle management was designed to do, which is to:

• Provide stability

• Control risk

• Create consistent behavior.

Problem: Middle management’s purposes also contribute to an organization's inability to transform.

5. Stop forcing change into an existing system; transformation will never exist in systems designed to sustain stable behaviors.

Action Required: Redesign the system(s) to allow for change to flow through them.

6. Fix it now.

• Remove one level of approval to expedite decision-making.

• Replace one legacy key performance indicator to accelerate change in behavior.

• Completely redesign one cross-functional process.

Rule: If the system is intact, nothing changes.

💡Key Takeaway: 

Change doesn’t stop because of a lack of strength in a strategic plan… it is hindered by an organization’s capacity to apply its current operating model as a protective mechanism against change.