It’s time to find your
In June 2022, North Highland connected
with over 560 leaders across key industries— including financial services, healthcare, health and human services, life sciences,
and transportation—to better understand
the trends and challenges confronting today’s businesses as they navigate the end-to-end transformation journey.
What we discovered is a desire to build more adaptive operations to power continuous transformation; a need for greater alignment across employees and leadership teams around transformation strategy; and opportunities to integrate data and analytics into every step for greater success.
Amidst the transformation that is reshaping our economies and societies, every business has a clear path to a better vantage point. In this blog series, we'll uncover what it takes for each industry to maximize its transformation potential.
Sustaining flexibility calls for a new vantage point: one that approaches the business as a connected ecosystem of people, processes, technologies, and data that works together to adapt, little and often.
In a world of continuous change, there’s no such thing as the end game.
To position your business to adapt and respond quickly to what's next, consider the following strategies:
Importantly, leaders and teams must prioritize these three strategies at five critical phases of transformation:
Design an operating model that can flex with change
Drive greater organizational alignment, among both leaders and the workforce
Support both of these efforts with strong D&A capabilities
To get started and position your business to adapt and respond quickly to what's next, consider the following strategies:
When defining and aligning on a transformation vision
When designing their transformation strategy
As they tap into value along the transformation journey
As they deliver on transformation strategy; and,
As they measure and adapt for transformation success
Importantly, leaders and teams must prioritize these three strategies at five critical phases of transformation:
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Insights
79%
79% of business leaders agree it’s important to design a flexible strategy
79%
29%
Seeking a blueprint for flexibility? Start with your operating model, which represents how the crucial elements of your business—your people, structures, processes, governance, technology, and data—come together to mobilize your strategy, drive outcomes for your customers, and adapt to changing conditions. While leaders acknowledge the importance of flexibility, fewer possess an ability to measure it.
The power of adaptive operations
79%
79%
29%
To ensure their transformation strategies can adapt, 79% of business leaders build flexibility into their operating model.
79%
79%
29%
Yet, you can’t manage what you can’t measure: Only 29% of leaders say they can readily measure how effectively they are integrating flexibility and adaptability into operational practices.
INSIGHTS
We’ve all had moments of being heads down, stuck in our silos, But when we come together to collaborate across disciplines, we connect the dots, see the bigger picture, and discover transformative solutions.
To set a strategy and operational blueprint that can flex to accommodate a range of potential futures, leaders should leverage a new combination of contemporary disciplines: design, systems, and scenario thinking—a mindset we call DSS Thinking.
Define a transformation strategy with built-in flexibility
Leaders we surveyed believe data and digital capabilities are valuable in operational assessment, enhancement, and continuous improvement, but they also struggle to track these metrics. It’s important for leaders to establish a strong digital core that unites the analytics, technology, and operational capabilities you need to measure change and respond to
it effectively.
Strengthen your digital core
Apply a rapid assessment tool prior to embarking on a transformation to surface and diagnose the “early warning signals” of success. This tool uncovers when critical metrics—such as those that track flexibility and adaptability of operational practices—are missing or need to be improved upon to support transformation delivery.
Elevate transformative potential with diagnostic capabilities
Are your employees fluent in the language of data? It’s key to unlocking the promise and potential of analytics. If you’re seeking clarity on your next steps, our experts can outline a clear path that encompasses tools, governance, competency models, metrics, and more.
Align, coach, and develop your people
96%
97%
43%
96% of business leaders agree it is important or somewhat important to align leadership around their transformation strategy. Yet, 69% say they frequently struggle to do so.
96%
97%
43%
We see a similar theme among employees on the front lines. 97% of leaders agree it’s somewhat important or important to align employees around their transformation strategy, but 65% frequently struggle to do so.
96%
97%
43%
What causes employee misalignment? 43% cite lack of clarity around transformation strategy. 37% cite lack of clarity around future-state roles.
An aligned workforce is a cohesive one, harnessing its collective horsepower to move the needle on a shared set of priorities. However, our research suggests that organizational alignment is easier said than done. What’s standing in the way? Lack of a clear vision is most often the culprit, according to the leaders we surveyed.
Achieving organizational alignment
56%
52%
22%
53% of leaders say they’re using D&A capabilities to define their strategic vision for competitive advantage.
56%
52%
22%
A similar 52% of leaders use D&A capabilities as a technique to design their transformation strategy.
56%
52%
22%
22% of business leaders use analytics as a technique to deliver on transformation strategies.
Data is high-octane fuel for adaptive operations and organizational alignment. According to our research, business leaders see data and analytics (D&A) as a surefire, cost-effective way to separate themselves from the competition. However, they may be missing opportunities to apply analytics as a technique in the delivery of their transformations.
Tying the journey together with insights
Discover how an adaptive digital core brings together the technology, analytics, and operational capabilities you need to sense and respond to constant change.
Use data
to drive continuous improvement
Navid has over 20 years of expertise in designing and embedding new customer, workforce, and operational models for clients that drive growth and resilience through change and transformation.
In addition to Navid's role as Managing Director, he serves as Global Lead of the firm’s Strategy and Management Consulting practices. Navid also serves on North Highland’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and he guides the firm’s next-generation talent strategy program (The Academy).
Navid Ahdieh
MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL LEAD OF STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT CONSULTING
VIEW PROFILE
Rob has over 20 years of customer strategy and customer-driven transformation expertise. He has led hundreds of successful customer and employee-centered engagements for B2B and B2C clients across industries. Rob specializes in helping our clients expand their market presence via experience-based differentiation.
Rob Sherrell
VICE PRESIDENT, CUSTOMER TRANSFORMATION LEAD
VIEW PROFILE
next steps
Find your next vantage by taking the following steps:
connect with our experts
Download the full study
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To find out, we surveyed 562 business leaders in June 2022, spanning multiple industries in the U.S. and U.K. We learned that leaders are prioritizing flexibility in their transformation strategies this year, but they are leaving some value on the table as they plan for and execute these strategies:
Businesses are continuing to operate in silos with little organizational alignment, despite embarking on enterprise-wide transformation initiatives.
Leaders and teams are not effectively leveraging
the resources at their disposal—such as data and analytics (D&A)—throughout the entirety of the transformation journey.
There is also room for leaders to ensure the foundational elements of their business—think workforce, operations, data, technology, and more—are configured to adapt “little and often” to support a flexible strategy as new circumstances quickly and continuously unfold.
How can today’s businesses adapt and respond quickly to what's next?
The research tells us that leaders and teams could benefit from a new vantage point: one that defines the business as a system of interconnected people, processes, and technologies.
With a more holistic point of view, businesses can better understand and monitor how big and small changes to customer preferences, employee needs, operations, economic conditions, and more ripple through the entire organization and make cross-functional waves.
Importantly, leaders and teams must prioritize these three strategies at five critical phases of transformation:
01
02
03
04
05
To position your business to adapt and respond quickly to what's next, consider the following strategies:
01
02
03
To position your business to adapt and respond quickly to what's next, consider the following strategies:
In this blog, we’ll share more about the opportunities and insights we uncovered in our survey. We’ll also walk you through actions you can take today to elevate your vantage point across the end-to-end transformation journey for greater success.
Define a transformation strategy with built-in flexibility
Leaders we surveyed believe data and digital capabilities are valuable in operational assessment, enhancement, and continuous improvement, but they also struggle to track these metrics. It’s important for leaders to establish a strong digital core that unites the analytics, technology, and operational capabilities you need to measure change and respond to it effectively.
Strengthen your digital core
Apply a rapid assessment tool prior to embarking on a transformation to surface and diagnose the “early warning signals” of success. This tool uncovers when critical metrics—such as those that track flexibility and adaptability of operational practices—are missing or need to be improved upon to support transformation delivery.
Elevate transformative potential with diagnostic capabilities
To extract insights that can help drive alignment among leaders, invest in the right infrastructure (e.g., operational data stores, enterprise data warehouses, and in-memory analytics warehouses). With access to insights, you can bring leadership stakeholders together to evaluate customer, workforce, and operational data and align on the value drivers that are most important in the context of your shared transformation vision and strategy. The result? Clarity on and alignment on priorities, which enables better decision-making.
Leverage data to drive clarity
Today’s competitive labor landscape makes employee alignment mission critical. Leaders across industries have an opportunity to more frequently incorporate Voice of Employee (VoE) data into their strategies to better understand preferences.
Dig into data to align employees
Adaptive Operations
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Alignment
Insights
Insights
Conduct strategic workforce planning to define
future-state roles
Create cross-functional alignment with a TVO
Build data literacy to fuel transformation delivery and measurement
Rely on data to overcome obstacles to dexterity
Only seven percent of leaders we surveyed engage in future-focused workforce planning as a way to tap into the value of people in their transformation efforts. Failure to engage in strategic workforce planning not only leaves your business at risk of not having the resources to deliver for customers as preferences change, but it’s also contributing to employee misalignment.
Conduct strategic workforce planning to define future-state roles
Consider an adaptive governance structure like a Transformation Value Office (TVO) to support cross-functional ways of working and help to rewire patterns of teaming that break down barriers and drive toward shared enterprise objectives
Create cross-functional alignment with a TVO
While leaders are generally confident in the tools and insights they have to make key decisions for a successful transformation strategy (49 percent of leaders are confident and 47 percent are somewhat confident), the workforce must also have the skills and competencies necessary to put insights into action via transformation delivery and measurement. Through your data literacy efforts, equip employees to apply data to adaptive, test-and-learn transformation delivery and measurement methods.
Build data literacy to fuel transformation delivery and measurement
Leverage AI-enabled analytics to pinpoint the factors that most greatly influence and motivate employees to adopt data in daily working practices.
Rely on data to overcome obstacles to dexterity
01
02
03
01
02
03
04
05
We all have moments in business when we become heads down, stuck in our own silos. But once we collaborate and see the picture as a whole, we begin to solve problems.
Only seven percent of leaders we surveyed engage in future-focused workforce planning as a way to tap into the value of people in their transformation efforts. Failure to engage in strategic workforce planning not only leaves your business at risk of not having the resources to deliver for customers as preferences change, but it’s also contributing to employee misalignment:
Conduct strategic workforce planning to define future-state roles
Consider an adaptive governance structure like a Transformation Value Office (TVO) to support cross-functional ways of working and help to rewire patterns of teaming that break down barriers and drive toward shared enterprise objectives.
Create cross-functional alignment with a TVO
While leaders are generally confident in the tools and insights they have to make key decisions for a successful transformation strategy (49 percent of leaders are confident and 47 percent are somewhat confident), the workforce must also have the skills and competencies necessary to put insights into action via transformation delivery and measurement. Through your data literacy efforts, equip employees to apply data to adaptive, test-and-learn transformation delivery and measurement methods.
Build data literacy to fuel transformation delivery and measurement
Leverage AI-enabled analytics to pinpoint the factors that most greatly influence and motivate employees to adopt data in daily working practices
Rely on data to overcome obstacles to dexterity
Click on Data Points
Define a transformation strategy with built-in flexibility
Strengthen your digital core
Elevate transformative potential with diagnostic capabilities
Align, coach, and develop your people
Use data
to drive continuous improvement
Conduct strategic workforce planning to define future-state roles
Create cross-functional alignment with a TVO
Build data literacy to fuel transformation delivery and measurement
Rely on data to overcome obstacles to dexterity
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Insights
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Insights
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Insights
Adaptive Operations
Alignment
Insights
