Trust & the Repeatable Transformation Playbook

[My views are my own]

For the last several months, I’ve been working on a manuscript to document my “repeatable playbook” of business transformation.

It’s required me to dive a lot deeper than I originally expected.

I started out by compiling and organizing a list of the tactics I’ve used.

At first, it was exhilarating. It felt like flipping through an old high school yearbook.

I quickly realized that the challenge with tactical transformation is that the cutting edge ideas of today quickly become business as usual.

As I pulled one mental thread after another, it became clear that the repeatable playbook of transformation (and the real source of value) is the people/human stuff.

In large organizations, especially those that have matrixed reporting structures, you can’t do it all yourself.

From my experience, the biggest reason transformation, turnaround and innovation efforts fail is because those leaders never build a posse. They end up alone, screaming into the wilderness — and nobody cares.

If you don’t get people on-side, you are going to be blocked at every move. While you may have buy-in from the center or top of the organization, it’s the people in the middle that actually run the business — and they don’t give a shit about your “brilliant ideas.”

For me, the starting point is always trust.

Corporations are packed full of politics, people with hidden agendas, and transactional relationships.

Quickly and radically establishing the envelope of trust has been my cornerstone for building kick-ass teams — and driving change.

There needs to be rapport, and a sense of protection if you want your teams to do big things, and to take risks.

If you are interested in engaging further in this conversation, I’d love to go on the journey with you. Please subscribe to my FREE newsletter/blog. The link is at the top of the page on a desktop browser and at the bottom of the page on a mobile browser. Also, please follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, and post a comment below. I’d love to know what you think.