Recognizing the need for change and knowing when to take action is key. Often the symptoms show themselves long after the sickness has taken hold – meaning by the time you realize you’re in trouble, you’re probably already in it deeper than you think.

When this happens, you need to make transformation a priority. Actually, figuring out what you need to do and where you need to be can be one of the most difficult elements of transformation because it requires genuine creative commercial thinking, which can be a scarce resource.

Having a leader who is prepared to take responsibility for implementing transformation is one thing, but never underestimate the importance of having a leader who knows what qualities are required, which ones he or she has, and how to fill any gaps there might be.

Most of the technical aspects of a transformation, such as governance and stakeholder engagement, can be to some extent learned. But the real gaps are around genuine leadership qualities – the type that can empower, motivate and win hearts and minds. This makes up a transformational leadership style.

A business transformation involves many parts. The complexities of your business processes mean a change in one area of the organization will have an impact on other areas. For instance, changing the organizational design of your Finance team may impact your HR team. Changes to technology might influence how finance data is generated, how this links with HR, and how you go about creating reports. To succeed, you need a truly integrated approach that looks at all parts as a whole.

Structure and resource underpin success, so it is vital to appoint a sponsor and program team who will be responsible for the transformation. Transformations that include a ‘people’ and an ‘organization’ workstream have a better chance of implementation success. These workstreams will be responsible for the management of change.

Capacity to deliver transformation whilst simultaneously running the business as usual (BAU) is fundamental. You need people in general management to have the time and focus if you’re asking them to help you deliver change, which is where bringing in interim executives – either as backfill or as specialist additional capacity – can be so useful.

Interims also bring with them high energy, broad expertise, and the right language to empower internal teams. All whilst building internal talent and embedding a positive legacy for achieving continuous growth and success.

Agreeing with all stakeholders a clear vision of what your evolved business will look like is crucial. After that, the challenge is maintaining coherence and alignment around all elements of it – i.e. technology, organization, people, process, performance management, and interaction with customers, partners, suppliers and regulators.

Running a business on a day-to-day basis is what most managers are good at, so it should come as no surprise that designing transformation is not a common skill amongst them. Transformation skills are not commonly on the hiring agenda, so the chances are that you’re unlikely to have all the skills you need for a transformation, no matter how capable your people are.

Really understanding how things could be done differently usually requires an external fresh pair of eyes. Only when you really understand the ‘from’, the ‘to’ and the ‘how’ can you begin to have honest conversations internally.

Tension between tactical needs and strategic needs is common. Transformation often involves taking steps in a direction that is counter-intuitive to the tactical need – so you have to be prepared to be courageous as well as focused.

Change is normally slow and organic. Transformation, however, often involves getting five years of change done in six months, often leapfrogging a lot of the organic stuff. It’s important to build this pace expectation into the transformation process. The other challenge is related to the size and the length of a transformation. Often organizations are so focused on getting to a certain point but fail to realize that embedding the change will take a long time, probably years.

Managing change in the workplace in terms of the impact it has on people should be a key consideration when undergoing any business transformation. It’s people that make change happen, and the success of a business transformation will be reliant on engaging employees to move to new ways of working.

However, the results of our Brunello Guild survey revealed that despite 86% of organizations tracking and communicating the benefits of the transformation to employees, 47% felt employees had become disengaged with change.

So, what is the best way to incentivize employees to stay motivated by change when the results may be years away? Our research showed that most organizations rely on regular and open communication to keep employees engaged, followed by financial reward upon project completion.

An often-misunderstood challenge is how to sustain transformation coherence in a dynamic market environment with changing customer needs, possibly an evolving, immature supply chain or the emergence of new disruptive technologies.

It’s easy to be caught out if you don’t reassess and re-evaluate as you journey through the business transformation. Things are changing all the time and you need to have that constant eye on whether your transformation roadmap is still appropriate.