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Insights into Transformation - PwC Study and Whitepaper July 12th 2008

Much of my focus on process and change management concerns itself with the sustainablity of the changes realised from BPM as much as it is about how to achieve the changes in the first place. That is why I was very pleased to be invited to an executive briefing of the recent study undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The research was led by Stephen Woolley, a PwC Partner and Advisory Transformation Leader. Undertaken between October 2007 and March 2008, the study shares first-hand insights and lessons learnt from CEOs and tranformation leaders from organisations including Orica, Myer, Telstra, Departmnet of Main Roads Queensland, National Foods, and AGL Energy.

Seven key areas were identified as categorising the lessons learnt:

1. Transformational Drivers
2. Leadership
3. Concentrating on the Customers
4. Stakeholder Communications
5. Cultural Change
6. Measuring Execution
7. Business and Usual

The study is an excellent read and extremely relevant considering that it draws together a breadth and depth of change and leadership experiences from some of Australia's most influential leaders and organisations. One of the key messages from Stephen Woolley for me was that "...increasingly people and culture are replacing IT and processes as the drivers of change. The future phenomenon is customer centric transformation".

At the briefing I attended, there were two industry panelists that joined Stephen Woolley to discuss their key lessons learnt from designing, executing and leading significantly large transformation programs:

Roland Spitty, Chief Information Officer, Visy Industries
Barry Trubridge, Head of Transformation Retail Banking, ANZ

Both provided excellent insights and I especially found some of Roland's comments relevant to BPM. They included:

- People, Process, and Technology must move at the same time/pace
- Technology is no longer the constraint - it is management's abaility to realise the potential of it
- Process reviews include the entire value chain and involved vendors and suppliers
- The only way to change a silo manager is to change their KPI's
- 90% of the best practice processes being applied in Visy are from outside their industry

As process and change management professionals, we are always seeking to influence senior executives and ideally get them to champion the change effort - the PwC Whitepaper is a great reference for us to consider when embarking on our own transformation journey...

The full whitepaper is downloadable from the PricewaterhouseCoopers website here.


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