Tomorrow’s Opportunities Key For Surviving Today’s Troubles
Ray Attiyah, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Definity Partners

Business executives currently face unprecedented economic troubles. Many leaders are ill equipped to guide their organizations through these troubled waters. It is a struggle to simply manage day-to-day business operations. Ray Attiyah, founder and chief innovation officer at Definity Partners, suggests the key to coping with these challenging times is an approach that looks beyond them.

“Organizations that thrive in a down economy maintain a focus on the future,” Attiyah said. “Successful business, and enlightened leaders don’t just focusing on improving productivity by 10 to 15 percent over the next year, they focus on transformation.

“The truly effective leaders,” he added, “continually re-think their process, structure and culture and focus on the evolving demands of the marketplace to achieve dramatically higher returns.”

Business transformation is redesigning your entire system. It’s not about what you’re currently doing right or wrong. Rather, it looks at where your business has to go to accommodate future demands. It’s all about defining a vision and executing a plan for sustainable success. There will always be a place in business for process improvements, but transformational changes commonly deliver 10 to 20 times the benefits of improvements initiatives. A real paradigm shift can help achieve results never before imaginable.

Attiyah cites the example of one client whose profits doubled in three years after initiating the transformational journey. Definity Partners helped another company effectively ramp up to meet massive new market opportunities. A new and nimble approach grew their revenues from $10 million to $1.5 billion during a 10-year period.

Transformation begins by understanding how your markets are evolving and how you need to reposition your company in the emerging marketplace. New trends and technologies can make existing processes obsolete and ineffective. It’s like trying to improve the buggy whip production process, while the marketplace adopts gasoline-powered vehicles -- even the most effective production process will not deliver profitability.

The process starts with a vision for success, and works backwards. Redesign your business based on future needs rather than today’s operations. Ask yourself, “If we started all over again, what would we be doing and how would we do it best?” This sort of change requires buy-in from every level of your organization.

Sustainable improvement requires effective management. Too often, conflict develops between day-to-day operations and transformation efforts. Eliminate this conflict by aligning your management approach with your transformational process. Make sure each employee understands how the sum is more than each individual part. Then, identify the champions – the top 10- to 20-percent that have demonstrated prior initiative, capabilities, competencies and a willingness to try new things. Provide them with a vision for success and get them engaged for real business transformation.

Change needs to be definitive and implemented with bold leadership. No one will embrace the new approach if old ways remain intact. To build a new culture, you must make the old one obsolete. Completely usher in the new and better system, and implement the transformation throughout the entire organization.

Reach Ray Attiyah, (513) 381-7200 or ray@definitypartners.com.