Can L&D Drive Organizational Transformation?

Transformation is an imperative for survival and L&D should be at the forefront of improving individual productivity and organizational capability that will create organizational transformation.

- Kameshwari Rao

Innovation, volatility and new customer expectations, are some of the many triggers that are a stimulus for Organizational Transformation. Organizations today, have to get past historical paradigms of doing business, as new entrants emerge that seem to play by a different set of rules. These new entrants like Uber, Netflix etc. are challenging core business assumptions and introducing new business models. This is forcing transformation with a capital “T” in existing organizations which involves changing their very essence. Just like turning liquid to gas, or lead to gold, Apple is moving from computers to consumer gadgets, Google from advertising to driverless cars, Amazon from retail to cloud computing. This list is ever increasing and is almost necessary for survival.

Organizational Transformation is an imperative, not an option for survival. Over 50 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared over the last 15 years1. Another study says that one in three companies will delist in the next five years2. A third shows that the “topple rate” of industry leaders falling from their perch has doubled in a generation3. Digital disruption is at the heart of the threat to organizations. Thus, organizations now need to consider the digital consumer with expectations of personalized experiences. They also need to move towards being a digital enterprise, leveraging technology to not only optimize and collaborate, but also revolutionize how they do work.