From the President

This edition of Consulting Matters is all about transformation. Transformation is defined as a dramatic change in form or appearance, or an extreme, radical, major change. This got me thinking about the transformations that have occurred in my life and I struggled to identify them because, while they may be transformational when viewed with the value of 20:20 hindsight, at the time they felt incremental. But if we experience change incrementally, does it mean that it is transformational? I don’t think these concepts are mutually exclusive.

When we think about the changes that occur in our lives it is rare for them to be sudden, major events that cause radical change. Yes, that does happen. But mostly, changes are an accumulation of little events that cause us to change progressively. Change, when viewed upon completion, may be a transformation—but it probably happened slowly. And if you are anything like me it happened painfully.

Last year caused some major changes in the lives of most people around the world and some of those changes have been transformational. I’ve heard the COVID-19 lockdown response described as the biggest working from home experiment ever conducted. It pushed all of us to look for the changes we could make to bring our teams together and continue to engage with our people. But how many of those changes will actually last? Of the extreme changes that were forced upon us, what have we continued to embrace as things become more normal?

For me, my life now feels very much like it was before COVID-19. My weekends are filled with sporting activities. My week includes going to work and spending it with people. I travel less—something I am extremely grateful for. Things have reverted in many ways to normal, so I am not sure that it was a transformational event.

In business we talk regularly about the ‘step change’ – something that will transform and radically alter our approach. I am a sceptic that the step change actually works. Instead, I think that many small, incremental changes are a far more likely pathway to meaningful and lasting changes, which in the end can be just as extreme or dramatic.

There have been a lot of dramatic changes in my life—many of them forced on me by surroundings and some of them brought about by changes I have chosen to make. An example of this is the changes that have come as my children grow up, we are experiencing the transformational change of my oldest son starting to drive and progressively becoming more independent. This is a slow gradual process but will dramatically change the lives of my wife and me.

Maybe rather than looking in the rear vision mirror at the transformations in the past, I should be looking for the transformations that I want to make in the future—for me, for my family, for my business.

Maybe rather than looking in the rear vision mirror at the transformations in the past, I should be looking for the transformations that I want to make in the future—for me, for my family, for my business.

Maybe we should be planning the transformations that we want to make and rather than having them happen because of our surroundings, have them happen because we are intentionally driving that change.

Maybe this is the transformation that we need to make—to intentionally work on making little changes that lead to a lasting, dramatic change when viewed through our rear vision mirrors.

Gerry Doyle

President