Emergn unlocks the secret to successful transformation in latest thought paper

LONDON – July 17, 2024 – In a world where business transformations often lead to widespread failure and fatigue, Emergn, the world’s most respected leader in digital business services, is pleased to unveil its latest thought paper: Make overcoming transformation fatigue your unfair competitive advantage.

The transformation crisis

Reports in major economies show a stark decline in innovation projects – from 45% in 2018-20 to 36% in 2020-22. Even more alarmingly, 70% of change programs are not achieving their aims. A major cause of this growing issue? Transformation fatigue.

But what is transformation fatigue? Emergn’s thought paper identifies five common types of fatigue that hinder successful change:

  1. The long wait for value: Organizations want to get to something they define as ‘valuable’ as quickly as possible. But transformations have long timeframes, so interest and buy-in for the change wanes long before value is realized.
  2. New change, same as the old change: Colleagues have been through numerous failed attempts at transformation, so they struggle to be invested. Experience tells colleagues that if they continue working as they always have, it will all go away. If previous change initiatives failed to deliver the expected value, organizations become wary of trying again. This is often a result of reorganizations leading to a different (or not so different when you peek under the hood) approach.
  3. Methodology dependency: Organizations invest in adopting specific methodologies, only to discover that methodology doesn’t necessarily produce the right mindset that the organization needs for success. This manifests as a heavy, process-driven set of steps.
  4. Buzzwords losing their impact: The lexicon of transformation has become cliched and lost some of its lustre, creating fatigue around the very description of transformation programs. Words like ‘agile’ and ‘transformation’ no longer generate excitement. Phrases are used to declare success when very little has changed: “We’ve successfully transformed.” But have you really?
  5. Skills, talent, and retention: Too often, basic training isn’t enough to provide people with the capabilities they need to make an immediate difference in the work that’s part of the transformation journey. Usually, the investment in upskilling employees is far less than what organizations invest in process and technology. This usually results in losing good people and tripling the spend hiring replacements. Those inside an organization feel replaceable, confused, and tired of change.

From fatigued to fit

Emergn offers actionable, tailored strategies to empower organizations to conquer fatigue and thrive. The right approach, leadership, and systems – and a change of culture – not only prevent transformation fatigue, but also maintains momentum for change initiatives.

Key insights and strategies

  • Organize by value streams to keep work in one place and minimize the need to hand it to other areas of expertise.
  • Switch to an experimentation mindset, using feedback frequently.
  • Keep teams together and fund their continuous development.
  • Make resources and capacity more focused on value delivery rather than on coordination, reporting, and bureaucracy.
  • Move from funding projects to discovering the value of a piece of work and focusing on products.
  • Set a clear vision that helps colleagues understand the benefits of your plans.
  • Overcommunicate: it’s better to err on the side of over-repetition of simple messages rather than leave anyone in any doubt about the goals and their roles.
  • Celebrate your successes.
  • Create an end goal that feels valuable.

A winning approach to transformation

“Transformation is not just about processes and technology; it’s about empowering people. Leaders need to enable their teams to create solutions, ensuring a well-defined process that integrates human and technological aspects,” said Emergn founder and CEO Alex Adamopoulos. “Transformation fatigue is common – the majority of organizations experience it – but with the right approach you can make overcoming it your competitive advantage.”

Read the full paper by Emergn:  Make overcoming transformation fatigue your unfair competitive advantage.

About Emergn

Emergn is a global digital business services firm with a mission to improve the way people and companies work. Forever. Emergn empowers the world’s most respected businesses – including Fortune 500, FTSE 100, and Global 2000 companies – to transform their promising ideas into valuable digital products and customer experiences, faster than anyone else. Emergn’s experts work with clients to transform their business in three ways:

  1. Helping to better define their thinking, including shaping their product organization and clarifying and communicating their product strategy.
  2. Developing their people by delivering exemplary training in product management, modern ways of working, and leadership.
  3. Delivering their outcomes by building customer-centric products and customer experiences.

Emergn has invested more than a decade perfecting a game-changing philosophy for the world of work to transform businesses – Value, Flow, Quality (or VFQ for short) – combining the best of Agile, Lean, design thinking and systems thinking, economics, psychology, and sociology. It is not just another methodology and instead takes investments clients have made in new ways of working and turns them into tangible results. This unique approach has been built to support enterprise-scale change and consists of the latest models, techniques, and tools for delivering work in an agile and effective way. Emergn has a strong presence in over a dozen countries, with its US headquarters in Boston and EMEA headquarters in London. For more information, visit Emergn’s website and follow Emergn on LinkedIn and X.

Media contact:

Dentons Global Advisors
James Melville-Ross, Adam Davidson, Nishad Sanzagiri: +44 7895 187727 [email protected]