Transformation Politics
Continuing on the theme of sharing more of the lessons learned from companies that are embarking on transformations to the product model, in earlier articles we discussed transformation regrets, the problem of managing the transformation as a project, and then we talked about the importance of winning the hearts and minds of the executives and stakeholders.
Many of these discussions are necessarily dancing around the topic of politics. In this article, I’d like to address these political issues directly.
In every successful transformation I can point to, the leaders were very aware of, and intentional, in how they addressed the political challenges. They did not avoid or ignore the challenges; they embraced them.
I want to be clear here that I don’t mean “politics” in any bad sense. As my partner Christian Idiodi likes to point out, “every problem is a people problem.” And since companies are comprised of people, it should be no surprise that changing how an organization makes decisions and builds products is bound to be a difficult change for many of the people impacted.
While many of the accommodations in the name of politics will be a result of the specific individuals involved and their specific personalities, there are a set of general learnings that probably apply in pretty much every organization, and those are the ones we’ll discuss here:
