Through Guy’s Eyes – Half-baked Transformation

I love cooking, especially with flair, but when it comes to baking, it’s a different matter altogether: a bit like organisational transformation.

Think of this: if a recipe calls for a cake to be baked at 200 degrees for 40 minutes, you won’t get the same results if you bake it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

No amount of heat is going to make up for the shorter time in the oven. Baking is a precision process that calls for certain steps to be followed in an exact sequence. And, if they’re not, you’re certain to have a flop.

Yes, it’s prescriptive. There may be times when it pays to be experimental when cooking up corporate initiatives, but organisational transformation isn’t one of them.

That’s why I believe that so many organisations find it difficult to change. They feel that it’s sufficient to dabble with the icing mix, without changing the essence, but the outcome is sure to be vanilla.

So, what’s going on here? It’s simple, really: for organisational transformation to be truly effective, it has to be a process that starts at the core of the company and then stretches its tentacles to touch all the extremities. And I’m not talking about calamari. It’s not enough to make just a few changes and hope that they’re so impactful that they’ll make up for what you haven’t altered permanently.

That’s why workshops, quick-fix teambuilding and motivational talks don’t have long-term traction. They have little power to enduringly effect a mindset – and, not unlike duck flambé, a short burst of excitement isn’t going to change the course of a company.

Just as there are no margins for error when it comes to baking, your change initiatives are certain to flop if delivered by enthusiastic amateurs.

Let us show you how.