The iceberg metaphor of business transformation
There are a lot of metaphors out there describing the nature of business transformation, or transformation in general (looking at you, Cinderella). But so often those metaphors fail to capture the human element of transformation.
To me, the metaphor most apt at describing my experience, as an individual contributor, or a years long and increasingly accelerating transformation is the idea of two icebergs. Your company has one foot on the business it used to be and the business it’s trying to be. It has one foot in a customer base it currently has and one foot in the customer base it wants to have. It has one foot in the products that got it to today, and one foot in the R&D that will provide the products of tomorrow.
The two icebergs, however, are not conjoined. They are both floating in isolation, and only in proximity because you’re holding them close by the sheer strength of your glutes, quads, and hamstrings. If left to their own devices they’d drift away.
Within your company, these icebergs often represent any lack of alignment between different orgs. One organization may be transforming faster than another, leaving the ability to work together tenuous and unstable. One iceberg is the results you expected this quarter vs. the results you have. Or maybe it’s the macroeconomic environment you started the year in vs. the environment you ended the year in.
To an individual, these icebergs are the job you did yesterday and the job you do today. They are the job you’re supposed to do and the job it’s actually possible to do. They manifest as the budget you thought you had and the budget you actually have.
It is important to see that these icebergs respond to the currents around them; they are never steady, they are always moving in different directions, even colliding in some cases. Not only are you split between two realities, two environments, two conditions, you’re split between expectation and reality. The footing is slippery, you’re unsure of yourself. You’re not even sure your perception of reality is accurate because it keeps changing, you see inconsistencies in messaging from leadership, you’ve been burned too many times by following the course you’ve been given only to be thwarted or for the course to change.
How do we equip our teams, from leadership down to the individual contributor, to maintain stability in this change? How do we empower individuals dealing with the day to day consequences of this instability to endure? Do we stop trying to stay stable in a transformation, or do we accept instability and instead focus on resilience and grace? What would happen if we let the icebergs drift? What if we didn’t ask our people to straddle two icebergs? Why wouldn’t that work? Are we trying to bind the icebergs together, or are we actually trying to just coordinate their movements? How much can you expect your people to be okay holding it together?