Courtesy of Cengage's Alina Aronova, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Business transformation across industries, organization size, and maturity levels' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Summit & Industry Awards.

Session Information:

Business transformation across industries, organization size, and maturity levels

Companies of all sizes must reinvent themselves, their strategies, and their innovation practices to keep pace in the digital age. This requires nothing short of a highly disruptive and disciplined program across the entire organization, turning all employees in every function into startup-like entrepreneurs. In this session, you will learn a successful cross-departmental approach that:

• Instills entrepreneurial mindsets, attitudes, and values into all employees worldwide, encouraging them to form their own cross-functional venture teams, and co-develop their most passionate ideas.
• Breaks down departmental siloes around co-innovation, improving employee engagement, team-based diversity, inclusion and collaboration.
• Rallies together the C-Suite, especially chiefs of Strategy, HR and Operations, and worldwide talent around companywide co-innovation that produces both incremental and game-changing solutions for the company, customers, and partners.

Session Transcript:

uh she's the chief of staff and head of operations for cengage technology group and she's going to be sharing her transformation methods with us today so without further ado thank you very much uber ibm when i think of these names i think of explanation when i think of the work they've been able to change experience for all of us moving from point a to b ibm was able to move away from the legacy of hardware into the world of servers amazon they used to compete selling books for example according to november now they compete with everyone because they sell it so what does it mean it means that a transformation is all around us it means that thousands of people working on these efforts every single day and millions of dollars and it does stay in the doctor.

But how can we make sure that we all be successful in these harvard very important initiatives but for me being an expert on this problem so i currently work for a company called cengage i specialize in operations and culture and talent that's probably not two areas that go together too often but for me that is one of those secretive effects that i enable operational excellence but i focus a lot on talent and culture in my last.

One year of experience i've been fortunate enough to work in a very wide spectrum of consumer growth in manufacturing financial sector technology when i was in financial sector i had a privilege to work in life insurance investments baking and privacy management.

So looking through all of those different experiences this one and looking through all the different issues is there a secret result if there's a formula that helps you as an executive as a leader to be successful independent of the industry that you're in independent of the type of the challenge that you face so today.

We're going to look at three different facets of very different challenges and very different companies all from my personal experience and then we'll see if their system in place that helps me
be successful.

So let's start imagine two financial judges really two households they have to come together to through nurturing acquisitions so what that means is that two companies that had 100 years of experience each that had thousands people on each side had to find a way to work together my personal role in this initiative was to focus on i see orientation there's about 600 people all together so i'll give you a little hint we were a life insurance division.

So it doesn't matter that we have over 10 different life insurance administrative existence that happens to normalize but it also meant that we did not have any consistency in any of our functional areas no consistent development processes no consistent planning processes no persistent product meaning practices all those areas have to be funded so think about change think about personal impact every employee of our company had to experience and how we had to overcome so that's case number one let's move on to case number two you can probably guess the name of the company recruiter they have a very loyal customer following i'll tell you a little bit more about this company and it's quite a surprising challenge.

There was a challenge of rapid growth so you need to think if it's actually a good problem to have it's exciting that we grow this stuff but the growing pains of a rapidly growing business are actually quite real imagine the company and the chaos that go with when for example a financial team will spend most of the month most of the 30 days closing.

Continuing to close the books because they had no time there was no system before so whether they deposit themselves that was scalable to give them time to focus in a higher ad a higher quality activity same thing with logistics we didn't really have a legislative system of the scalable we didn't really have a system for new product development.

We were a 24 7 business international business and we didn't really know how to serve our products were gone because we couldn't stay aligned with the network so think about the scale of change think about the scale of change that's happening and how do you navigate all of that so it's a very different type of challenge now moving on to search exciting and this is the company wearing a breakout.

I've been with this company for about five years and we have i would call them two level challenges so cengage is education technology company but it's also a publishing house as you probably all know so the sphere of education is really changing what that means is that now now we need to publish books but we also need to provide digital solutions to other students.

So let me explain two levels of challenges one is metra the other one is micro so it would matter the challenges that they have of course we have very prominent competitors large significant similar to us so we have to continue to fight the balance of market share and raise for digital transformation looking at these competitors another challenge is that there's thousands of startups that are coming in the state of education and technology right now as either if these are innovative hungry resources let's think of ideas that never have been thought before.

So our team now has to compete not only with eventual competitors but this new grade of imperatives that we've never had today before and then thirdly the whole concept of education is changing students are different they have different vibes we have a lot of online education so the technologies are changing so we really have to think of what education is using today's world.

How our company should be able to adjust those so all of these are examples of macros now let's move on to micro this is where i spend a lot of my time working the team so technology team did not exist probably a year before i started because we were not a software company we had to become one in a very short period of time so we have to hire over 100 people we have to onboard them train them online introduce software development processes.

Build products that are popular that are scalable they are commercially successful reliable we have to do all of that of course you can quickly probably get a lot of your company without stopping anything else so how do you know where to do this and how can you make sure that there's a system that works for the framework that will work regardless of the challenges that you're in because you're probably thinking of a lot of challenges new organizations and it feels impossible so as a practitioner as a person who dedicated a lot of years of my experience working in these high risk.

You know very politically charged initiatives the company's reputation were on your name is on the line what do you do so that's what you're we're gonna discuss but first i'd like to share with you a model that is one of many many models that exists in the field of change management transformation there's ton of research that's done these days and one of the models that i'll share with you in a moment is something that you can find in academia it's something you can find in the research and you can solve it so here's an example every element in that model makes
perfect sense it is strategy envision process technology continuous integration every element makes perfect sense the reason a model like this doesn't work for me as a practitioner because it's not actionable.

So what does it mean when you find yourself on Monday when you show up to work after long ago and your boss is telling you now you're in charge of brand new erp implementation the company has never done something like this we've never seen anything like this now you're in charge of examining customer experience for the whole company.

you want to be a leader in that space or now you're in charge of becoming a writing new culture organization what possibilities it does where do you begin as a practitioner how is it impossible to figure somebody like this out it feels what you said so through my experience for those of you that i often see.

I enjoy um you have to have a national point and that's what i would like to share with you today and this is the work that i put together based on my experience and ability to synthesize sort of the mental model that i followed regardless of the company so if we look at this particular model if i had to guess the first thought that comes to mind is probably why they're so simple and how possibly this can be attacked.

So it's really simple for a reason i'm happy to discuss more and advanced versions of it with you guys outside of this meeting today but for the purposes of today's discussion what i really want you to do is to focus on the nuance that i will describe in each of these steps and the most important part for me is the transaction there's specific setup of two that you're going to be doing knowing where to begin in knowing how to proceed so let's move on and look at each of the phases so let's start with a big number two what you start is the baby let me clarify what i mean by jesus the project that i just listed for you guys as you can imagine they all they they all have ambitious goals they probably have a lot of energy around them some of it's positive some of it's negative you have a lot of political agenda.

You pretty much feel like you start off there i think all of us can think of those projects so to me when i find myself in that situation what i do is i leave and i lead by stepping up you step up and you start working with your team to get to clarity and you start working with your team to the point that you start making decisions even if it's just initial stuff if you get them out of this to a phase of vague clarity you get them out of the state of uncertainty.

What it also means is that you take forest on your shoulders so when people say what's going on in this project there's probably going to be a lot of good enough but i mean it's running we don't actually know what's going on we're learning what you need to do as a leader of such initiative you take full responsibility head-on you perfect your team because you believe your personal name is another one.

You get them to focus on what is the actual choice you know get them out of that stressful mode and work them through but it was identified one of the brain actions there's probably thousands and millions of little details that you will work through but what i need my plan is that you set up the initial set of activities you have to get your team productive you have to get them focused you have to get them move forward so plan would really mean clear enough path for them so they know immediately today this week we'll figure out the rest.

Later but you get a little calm you get everyone grounded clear enough to see what the next stage can be so that's the you step up plan your team starts to get a little bit more clear on what they do with you communicate also has a number of different meanings that you probably think what i mean by communication it's not about emails, it's not about status reports, it's about defining a common and shared vocabulary vocabulary for not only for your team but for your organization.

So you can clearly articulate what you're solving for but you're not sold before and you find yourself in every form you can it's a town hall it's a staff meeting of your fear you continue to educate and um explain what you deal with and how you call specificity that you define so what i mean by communicate is that you develop a common language and you start a simulated across your ecosystem .

So now will you be on to phase two communicate now turns into a different need now you focus on showcasing your team's work celebrating success giving this ability because that's how you build confidence that's not only confidence in you as the leader the confidence in your team and you do that on behalf of a team for the rest of the organization execute the projects that we all thinking about probably are extremely complex and i think it's problematic and topic of the conversation.

How do you deliver any complex enterprise while you compare ambiguous projects but let's assume that you have korean place it becomes a whale oil machine at various levels of complexity you have gardening processes whatever is appropriate for organization you have static means reports anything that can deal with the appropriate level of cadence given to your political landscape, given
the maturity of the organization.

You are just according but the goal is to know that we actually you know a couple of weeks ago a couple of months ago it was completely unstructured tails now there's clear path to what you're trying to accomplish this is how you shift from flame to execution in the best way i know that my team is on the path to success before the project isn't finished because i started to feel that my name gets de-associated with the context.

So the early phases i hear my name mentioned by pretty much anyone in the organization because there's a lot of bonds about this project everyone wants to be involved but again nobody was sort of fully open to be done and then when they wanted to part of it and no one knows what to do they would say well i need an honest i need there's someone in charge they'll figure it out and i take that full sort of way of responsibility and versus my shoulders because i know we have a way to get through this but what i start to see later is that my name is not mentioned as much anymore i think my team are very comfortable to navigate through whatever questions and topics.

They step up delete the charge and this is the moment where i know when i need to do the switch what i defer is to switch it's the leadership is the leadership change in me so the task you stepped up you took charge what you do now is that you enable your team and do that and you let them run the project and this is how you know that they're the ones who own this project now really not you you're there to meet with them so while you lead your team be the owner that means it's a very powerful thing while you're the one leading this initiative your team is really the one who owned this.

When that reading happens think how how powerful this will be for your team organization but what happens is at the end of these initiatives not only your name is forgotten which is to me is the biggest show of success but the rustic organization doesn't really even remember how things used to be this really becomes a new one because this or everyone came to that way of doing this way of adjusting to new worlds new processes together.

It felt so natural native to them because they felt like they owned them the ability to adjust your leadership style from stepping in into backing up and enabling the team everything the mastery that ideally advice everyone is focusing on so what we'd like to do next to lead you with a couple of key takeaways so everything we just discussed but only has the chance of working with giving back to new people what i mean by it is that not only you hire the guests you trust them you enable them you take the risk for them.

You really work through any challenges you need to give them the talk with themselves playing experiments so what i'd like to say here is that independent of how skilled we are as program members as project managers we need to be able not only to build a plan for something that is complex but even harder task is to build a plan for something that's vague that's unclear that illegal so your ability to build plans in any sort of circumstances with any uh level of uncertainty is paramount but what i think is more important the fact that one guarantee i'm going to give you is that that point will also change so instead of focusing on building that plan is absolutely perfect you focus on your ability to adjust no matter which that aware you are in the life cycle of your project.

There will be changes in your job is to adjust accordingly so you build a plan that's solid and then you adjust the dependency and lastly i which i believe is sort of taking charge of taking ownership of neither and then adjusting in appropriate situations and allowing routines to win so i think this is how you deliver on truly sustainable transformation we started today with a question how do you assure that change can stay what can you as a leader do about it.

I hope i answered that question but i'm open to any other questions in your practice do you differentiate between project management and nutritional combat methodology and process improvement projects or you use the same model and approach i grew up through various levels of project management from technology software delivery process improvement to information  large scale and i believe it's not about the type of project it's about the way you approach the project so i approach all of them using this model so as i prepare for this presentation.

I try to share some insightful information and as it turns out not only i thought about historically itself because i moved from different industries a lot of people think how you can publicly do that but i also have taken various types of projects and they've been successful if i look back i think it's because this has been my mental model so to me it's not about the type of a project it's from an information project another question that i often get asked and i think i'll share the answer with you as well uh are there any projects that set up a failure so you're given a project it has no chance can it can can it happen if there are projects that you feel like you know it's not your whole.

It couldn't have been successful what do you do so my personal opinion those projects have not existed i think it's you trust your government you trust your team and i go with something like this and i have been you know had a specialty in the past where i was put into projects that have to be saved over the head work highway and i think everything can be saved i think it's how you approach it and how you enable the team to support it the transformation and culture change management i think that switch is probably the most important piece because this is where it's not you running it all the way it's the team has to sort of change the perception of how enabling really are and they own that solution and use it there to solve problems okay change management.

I think i've tried different things in some different organizations to me is that if you understand like if you understand what your company will consider a good approach so it's not the same book works everywhere we've launched slack um a year ago so and turned out to be one of the most we had celebration from 8 a.m to 5 p.m today.

The government's both members no one's members of the work that went into it but apparently i'm remembered by the day of plan but i think that was an environment that was you know the celebration focus and company that i work right now working together i think in some other organization i wouldn't use that approach so my job is to understand what's going to be culturally acceptable and push those buttons like really hit on the thing that i know what will working you up so i wouldn't design approach without knowing you know how the organization will approach or how they accept every you know different techniques that's what i believe. Thank you very much i have a couple of those who do the first you guys thank you today i'm happy to talk about this topic for hours and days so happy to engage in helping any way i can thank you.

About the Author

Alina Aronova,
Chief of Staff for the Global Product Technology,
Cengage.

In today’s day and age every organization seems to be in a constant state of change. Navigating these small and large transformations can be daunting, especially when many transformation efforts take longer, cost more and even fail. Companies grapple with being “reactive or ready” for change.

There are many types of transformations that a business must go through including digital, organizational culture, customer experience, operational, distribution, growth, sustainability, risk management, and much more. Many experts will try and argue that each one of these changes requires you to tackle them in fundamentally different ways. But, is that really true?

Throughout her career, Alina Aronova has successfully supported, led and sustained an array of business transformations in diverse functional areas, industries, and organizations. Each transformation brought its own unique needs, obstacles, challenges, and constraints. Yet, at the same time they all required innovation, adaptation and rethinking how the organization operated.

Looking back at all her success, Alina asked herself “Why was I able to be an effective change agent in different industries with different challenges?” Through this questioning she uncovered her unique methods of defining, organizing and leading prosperous transformations. In this session Alina will share with you her experiences in vastly different industries, stories of her success and failures; insights on how she tackles change; and the competitive advantage that is at the heart of all her transformations.