How do Transformation Costs become Turmoil Costs?

by Rituparna Nath

April 10 2024 | 03 min read

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The biggest token of love made an entire empire bankrupt.

The Taj Mahal – more than being a monument of love for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s dead wife, is a piece of history that serves as one of the biggest management lessons for today’s leaders.

It is a lesson from one of the biggest transformations of the world, showing how poor decisions can even bankrupt an entire empire. A lesson, that shows how all hell breaks loose when leaders fail to align cost and transformation for survival.

Built by more than 20,000 craftsmen from all over the world for more than 22 years, Shah Jahan spent all the riches of his ancestors and their ancestors to create the historic architecture Taj Mahal.

A similar story runs through the veins of modern-day manufacturing businesses today. A leader sets on course with their exceptional “business transformation vision“ for building the company’s future and takes all the money and manpower for a wild ride, trying to turn this vision into reality.

The business keeps pumping more and more money, hoping to see their “Taj Mahal” in action, only to realise months or sometimes years later that the land beneath is filled with water, and they are sinking!

So what lessons does the Taj Mahal teach?

1. Don’t save to fund, save to transform. Like Shah Jahan, most leaders focus on how much budget they need to get for their digital transformation project. But why don’t they analyse how the output of this transformation can help reduce the budgets of overall operations?  

A good measure is to methodically calculate how disruptive cost approaches such as automation will reduce your cost to serve every outlet, or how it can increase the per-employee productivity. 

2. Cost transformation in people. Taj Mahal was built with the best of everything the world could afford. But imagine if one of the craftsmen spoke up during their team standups and explained how much money and years could be saved by doing X Y Z things to optimize the project.

Could it have cost less than 32 million rupees in the 16th century to build this masterpiece? In case of businesses, employees can support this effort by being aligned with the company’s goals, leveraging RTM technology to increase their throughput, and identifying the top tasks that yield the highest profits.

But, the biggest lesson for you to remember as a leader, is that cost doesn’t exist to be calculated. It exists to be reduced. So don’t add turmoil costs to your transformation journey.

Your peers who have done it before you, are all choosing to lead with 360° RTM Technology and Retail Intelligence.

If you want to know how you can do it too, just click here below to meet the world’s best RTM craftsmen.

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