The Three Questions to ask of your transformation
Imagine a world where you can diagnose the likelihood of your transformational change being successful in minutes.
This is what the Three Questions gives you.
The power of the questions come from the self-awareness they give you and your stakeholders. They change the conversation to focus on the benefits and risks, and raise awareness of the strategies needed for success.
The questions are the start of the conversation and give you the opportunity to enquire further.
Question One: Does anyone need to think, act or believe differently for this [strategy or transformation] to be successful?
Why: This question establishes whether a behavioural change is required to get to your strategic outcomes. If it is, the human factor cannot be ignored.
How it works: It causes you to think through the implications of achieving the strategic vision, rather than the product that is being created.
So What: Strategies that rely on a behavioural change need an adoption strategy.
Question Two: How much of your benefits depend on people making different choices?
Why: Having established that a behavioural change is required, this question shifts the focus to the benefits and connects the two.
How it works: Framing the strategy in the context of the benefit statements makes the impact feel real. The ‘how much’ requires you to consider the source of the benefits and to quantify them. Once that number has been verbalised, it becomes firm in your mind. 80% of $10m is $8m. The scale and importance of the strategy has been established.
So What: Where your benefits are highly dependent on humans changing behaviour, you will need a high impact adoption strategy with outcomes that are monitored and managed closely.
Question Three: Are there any consequences for not adopting your strategy?
Why: If there are no consequences, the likelihood of the strategy being achieved is reduced significantly, especially if your environment has competing priorities.
How it works: The question is deliberately provocative, to disrupt the enthusiasm and excitement that exists within your team.
This question prompts you to consider the importance of the strategy to the organisation in the context of other priorities. It raises awareness of the influence structure within the organisation as you think through who would apply the consequences.
So What: Changes without consequences are optional and depend on the willingness of your targets to do something differently of their own choice.
Without consequences, it will take longer to influence and persuade targets, adding to the costs and effort and making it harder to guarantee the penetration of the change through the organisation and with that, the delivery of the benefits.
What Next
Awareness is the first step. If you are aware of the adoption risks, you are more likely to mitigate them.
Where your benefits are dependent on someone, somewhere choosing to do something differently, your traditional adoption strategy, focused on awareness, engagement and training will have limited success.
If you want a different outcome, then you need to approach your adoption differently.
A winning adoption strategy
In an environment where a strategy is optional, the most effective approach is to create an environment where making a choice to adopt the strategy is most likely to be successful.
We use a concept called the ‘moment of choice’, it focuses on the point where your value is realised, often a few people making a choice to do something differently, whether that is negotiating with a vendor, or persuading a customer to adopt a different pricing strategy.
We work out from that moment of choice through the layers which motivate a choice being made, including:
Tribes and tribal leadership: What are the socially acceptable behaviours and do they help or hurt our strategy?
Competing priorities: What else is competing for the attention of those that need to make different choices?
The environment: How does history, context and culture impact the choices that are made?
From these we quickly reach a compelling adoption strategy that is most likely to deliver your success, along with the brain hacks and ‘nudges’ to help.
Even better, a winning adoption strategy prepares the ground before you ask those who are the ‘moment of choice’ to do something differently, and often accelerates your value delivery.
How we can help?
From our client work, these are the most impactful and popular requests we get:
Delivering strategic value: An expert assessment of your transformation programme, with insights and actionability [LINK]
Creating adaptable organisations: We help you prepare the ground ready for your strategic adoption: [LINK]
Creating leaders of change: We build the capability in you and your teams to assess and build a winning adoption strategy [LINK]
Explore with us: If you would like to explore our concepts further, talk to us, sometimes a friendly chat works wonders. We are happy to share our learnings.
At Pike Squared, we use the concepts of ‘Irrational Change’ to create winning adoption strategies, harnessing the power of behavioural science, neuroscience, psychology and viral marketing to you strategic success.
