Transforming companies is never easy and the skills required often difficult to find within the company. There is always strong leadership required and great interpersonal skills to build relationships and bridges across, but there are also four different perspectives, or different “animals”, that I believe are important to get the job done: the Academics, the Consultants, the Practitioners (corporate business people) and the Investors.
Academics go deep into one topic an apply rigor to the thinking, but most of the times they work on things that were already tinkered with at the business. They produce models that are intellectually challenging but sometimes not implementable in practice.
At the same time Consultants come in and out of the business producing elegant (though sometimes superficial) solutions to specific business issues but disappear the moment those solutions need to be implemented. Many times, they miss or not consider the impact or relevance of whatever they are working on the rest of the organization.
Practitioners are the ones in pain with no time or imagination to come-up with the solution but resources to outsource it. They are the ones that will need to live with it, implement it, get it done. They live in the real world of day-to-day trading with its ups and downs. However, many times practitioners miss the point of the economics of the business. They don’t realize that if businesses don’t generate cash, they are not sustainable and sooner or later they will need to shut down.
This is what Investors know better. How to ensure the business generates sound financial results and is protected (as much as possible) from uncertainty and creates value. They see the business as an investment and not as a “job”. They have skin in the game.
When transforming companies, you need to bring on board the following key perspectives: the rigorous thinking from Academics, the practical ideation from Consultants, the implementation drive from Practitioners and the business savviness from Investors. You need to be strong in the area you perform but you need some proficiency in the other areas as well.
Are you balanced? What are you missing?