Utilising challenging market situations as a catalyst for positive business transformation

Talk the Walks Founder Anura De Alwis

‘Talk the Walks’ is an innovative talk series and platform built on the vision of transforming tomorrow’s leadership and reflects issues that matter to current business challenges. It comprises of a series of

thought leadership insights shared by successful leaders on transformational leadership qualities, ideas and effective change strategies, antecedents for success and visions for the future of business.

Launched with the aim of arming business leaders and decision makers with valued insights to shape their company’s vision, business strategist and transformation expert and Talk the Walks Founder Anura De Alwis believes that whilst the current pandemic is lauded as being a significant digital transformation catalyst for most businesses, and have expedited businesses to think outside the box, true transformation of an organisation is about changing to fit its timely requirements.

He said: “COVID-19 pushed organisations to explore the possibilities of adopting different working models, make changes to the way they operated and improve workflows. It brought on not just a digital improvement but a 360° revamp of a business’s technology, processes and people. With the right steps and actions, businesses can take the crisis as an opportunity to build for the future.”

Anura added: “Real transformation therefore is understanding where you stand in the business today and being able to first harvest the optimum from existing assets.”

Organisations must assess and understand where they stand holistically and examine if they have the right business model, the right skills, the right processes, the right people and the right leadership. 

He notes that organisational maturity is “the first step in any transformation” and is a combination of a number of aspects including but not limited to processes, people, systems, compliances and standards. Organisations need to adopt proper maturity index calculations to ascertain just how mature the business is. 

Once an organisation establishes its business maturity including digital maturity, it must look at putting a strategy in place and then execute the transformation. “Every transformation should be aligned to the business and the business should drive the transformation and not the technology,” he advised adding that “technology is not the business, but it will enable the business and give a competitive edge”.

Anura further opines that people play the most significant role in business transformation, and therefore organisations must do a thorough assessment of its people to determine whether they can support the change that is required. 

“People and organisations fail transformation not because of technology but because of not being able to absorb it. Businesses must therefore spend time and effort to understand people’s strengths and skill levels, and then provide necessary training to qualify them – they must unlearn and then learn. Implementing a solid change management program is also essential, entailing all the hard decisions that come with it.”

He also emphasises on the secret formula to an organisation’s transformation success – innovation. “Transformation needs strategy and execution, and this cannot come about without innovation in place,” he shares, “innovation makes everything better and simpler”. 

“Many people think of innovation in products, but innovation should also be applied to processes to ensure the success of transformation.”

‘Talk the Walks’ having hosted and interviewed some of the topmost transformational leaders who have achieved excellence, shaped their environment for success, demonstrated perseverance, and motivated others with inspiration, to ‘invent’ the future, hopes to utilise the platform as a catalyst that helps business leaders craft the future vision of their organisations with innovative strategies that leads to higher performance and better ROI.