It has been repeatedly claimed that the biggest challenge to achieve a true (digital) transformation is to overcome challenges which are mostly internal: Lack of buy-in from executive committees, no real vision of change, no leadership, internal politics, heavy governance, reluctance to change… The challenges are numerous for a company needing sometimes to go as far as to change its purpose, business model, operational model and even positioning on the market altogether managing it’s legacy.

Digital transformation requires courage and let’s be honest, a good amount of resilience from the stakeholders mandated to execute it.

Influencers, experts, consultants have been chanting in the last months that employee engagement and change management programmes were key to succeed, but never did they have enough data to prove their point. Luckily, McKinsey published earlier this month the results of a survey they conducted, demonstrating the importance of “People” in transformation plans – and the results are drastic.

Although the entire study is extremely interesting and full of learnings, I will just extract one statement:

“Among respondents whose companies’ transformations failed to engage line managers and frontline employees, only 3 percent report success, compared with success rates of 26 and 28 percent, respectively, when each of these groups is engaged.”

Yes, the figures are painful. Not only 3/4 of transformation programmes fail, but you are certain to fail if you don’t engage your all levels of your organisation in the transformation. 

Line managers, front-line employees, those who will deliver and express the new way of working of a transformation, if not properly engaged, don’t believe in it and when they don’t believe in it, don’t act on it. Your great strategy, vision, plans, will receive poor execution and hence, not the results expected. It all drills down to that.

Facing this challenge, and in order to effectively support and accelerate to deliver on these plans, we are proud to welcome Laethitia Caldana, Sandrine Lits and Inge Collet within Belly & Brain.  All three have a proven first-hand experience in change management, transformation of front-line departments, design and execution of engagement programmes and culture change.  Together, they will work hand in hand with the business strategists to define the transformation approaches, already identify potential loopholes and challenges to execute and sustain the change in time, and work to define the change strategy to gradually deploy and engage into the transformation.

Our transformation plans do not only focus on the WHAT but also from the HOW. And it’s time your plans do as well. 

About the author

Audrey has been managing digital strategy and digital transformations during several years from within large corporations before creating Belly & Brain.

By creating Belly & Brain, her aim was to design a consultancy firm finally adapted to the needs and reality of business leaders confronted to strong digital challenges - combining consultancy and coaching capabilities able to handle as well marketing and sales strategic questions, as well as change management, organisational & culture challenges needed to actually deliver on the transformation.

Audrey organises regular free meet up sessions with executives to discuss their challenges and give rapid feedback on solutions and options. Learn more about these here