A Handbook of Business Transformation Management Methodology

Business transformation management is the holistic management of extensive, complex changes on which an organization's future success strongly depends. 'BTM squared' or 'Business Transformation Management Methodology' presents a new approach to business transformation management, developed by a unique partnership of international corporations, academics, and consultants in response to the increasing pressures on organizations to perform in the face of a rapidly changing environment, and the inability of current transformation models to help in the implementation of change processes. Given the limitations of existing methods and management approaches and in view of the complexity of business transformation, successful business transformation management can be seen as a meta-management discipline that integrates and extends individual disciplines. The Business Transformation Academy (BTA) manages a trans-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural network operating under the auspices of the Business Consulting Division of SAP, the global provider of enterprise software and businesses support. Under the leadership of the BTA, an interdisciplinary team of thought leaders from psychology, information technology, strategic management, process management, and social sciences have joined together to create a '360-degree' view of what business transformation means. This handbook, created by 30 experts from all over the world is intended for C-level executives, reflective managers and consultants, and those with an academic interest in change and transformation. BTM2 focuses on a holistic, integrative approach to transformation. The need to see transformation from a strategic point of view has long been espoused, but a conceptually robust and practical method to achieve this has yet to be articulated. This book provides such an integrative approach and methodology, with an emphasis on the balance between the rational and emotional aspects of transformation. Transformation is frequently addressed as a technocratic exercise, the success of which depends on accurate diagnosis of need and the selection of appropriate means of communication. Failure is chiefly laid at the door of poor needs analysis or poor communication. However, issues around the emotional readiness of employees to absorb and accept transformation initiatives are often underestimated. How the rational and emotional aspects of transformation can be combined is a consistent theme throughout this handbook. Critically for practitioners, the emphasis in this book is on execution. Managers in transformation contexts often know what to do, and yet they fail to execute. This is an enduring feature of organizational life and this book is about closing the knowing-doing gap. A wide range of theory is discussed to help understand the phenomenon of transformation, but above all, this is a practical work. It is characterised by new content on key elements of transformation management and new insights from the case studies that were used to both develop and test the BTM squared methodology that is offered here.