A holistic program and critical success factors of corporate transformation

Corporate transformation is fundamentally changing how all employees in an organization perceive, think, and behave -- so that they can satisfy the diverse needs of all key stakeholders for an extended period of time. Due to our turbulent global economy, achieving corporate transformation continues to be at the forefront of senior management's attention -- and responsibility. Yet this incredibly complex problem is often addressed as if it were quite simple. Otherwise, why would senior executives continually subject their organizations to singular, quick-fix approaches that rarely, if ever, result in long-term survival and success? In this article, Ralph Kilmann presents a holistic approach for succeeding at corporate transformation by identifying -- and integrating -- the great variety of improvement activities that are usually implemented in a singular manner. The essence of this holistic approach is a sequence of eight interrelated tracks, which consists of five system tracks (culture, skills, team, strategy-structure, reward system) and three process tracks (gradual process, radical process, learning process). This paper concludes by highlighting eighteen critical success factors that were learned by implementing this approach in a variety of organizations -- in both the US and Europe.