What is a Transformation Gap?

A “Transformation Gap” is the gap between an organization’s understood need to transform versus its own view of its capabilities to successfully execute and achieve that transformation.

Understanding the Transformation Gap

The Transformation Gap is commonly measured in management sessions, strategy workshops, and board engagements. It is based on three questions and five steps:

• What will our company look like in ten years? (future outlook)
• How significant a transformation will we require? (on a 1-10 ranking)
• How ready (capable) are we for this transformation? (on a 1-10 ranking)
• Measuring our transformation gap. The gap between question #2 and question #3 is your transformation gap
• Closing the transformation gap. Shift from analysis to action. Define key steps to close your transformation gap

A Transformation Gap of 1, 2 ,3 is considered very low. A Transformation Gap of 8, 9, 10 is equally very high (let’s call it extremely high). A Transformation Gap of 5, 6, 7 is considered high and generally demanding enough.

During our work and various customer engagement sessions in 2019 we realized only a few groups or management teams had an intuitive grasp of the idea behind the ‘Transformation Gap’.

We iterated several exercises and – eventually – visual strategy tools to help create a better shared understanding and common view on this thing called the ‘Transformation Gap’.

In early 2020 we created the tool Transformation Gap. This canvas allowed us to quickly get groups introduced to the concept and – equally important – they got a clear and simple visual framework to work on the gap problem. Having run sessions with groups in Europe, South America and the Nordics, we see the Transformation Gap canvas can easily be applied by our key partners and quickly create both understanding and impact in any group.

Case Study: Telecom

The brief example below illustrates how a session on the Transformation Gap might look like for a Telecom operator. Notice the different views on Strategic Ambitions, a far too common sight

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What does the Transformation Gap look like in your firm? If you want to dig deeper into the tools, case studies and methodology behind Building the Transformational Company, register here for our 5 week online certification program starting on September 16, 2021. For more insights on how to build your own transformational company, download the full report here.