While there’s no doubt that instigating large-scale change initiatives is challenging, businesses cannot afford to stick with the same tools and processes as the world around them rapidly evolves. As a former Transformation Executive at Telstra, Alex Badenoch has first-hand experience answering calls for change that are impossible to ignore.
She explains the reasoning behind Telstra’s decision to embark on an agile transformation journey, noting, “Doing what we’d always done was no longer a choice. The strategy that came together had many components, including customer experience, digitization, and portfolio management, but at the heart of it was our organization, our operating model, and how we engaged, leveraged, and deployed our people against the most important work that we had to do.”
While the concept of agile change may sound elusive to some executives, Badenoch explains why skills are a key part of the foundation for creating a concrete way to work more dynamically. In her words, “The use of agile lets you flex the application of skills and capabilities that you’ve got in the workforce to the most important work. It leads to some really great outcomes because generally, your employees become really clear on what the strategy of the business is and how they contribute to it.”
Creating a sense of transparency is crucial to driving lasting change, which is why Badenoch points to measurement as an essential element of successful agile transformation. “Measurement was so important to us. It helped with providing clarity to us as an executive team and to the whole company. Sometimes you embark on a journey and it’s not clear what success is going to look like, so it’s a bit harder to maintain momentum,” she concludes.
