Originally broadcast on BFM 89.9 – The Business Station: 🎙️ Listen to the Full Conversation: Sheila Singam discusses Transforming Organisations by Transforming People on BFM 89.9’s Raise Your Game podcast with Freda Liu and Remilla Seereederan. (Run time: 18:06 mins). Published on 27 February 2015.
Have you ever noticed how leaders react when an organisation starts falling behind?
The knee-jerk reaction is almost always to roll out a grand strategic vision, announce a massive reorganisation, and fire up a high-energy “rah-rah” launch event. We tell everyone where the business is going and why the destination is fantastic. Yet, six months later, momentum stalls, team friction worsens, and senior management is left scratching their heads, wondering why nobody bought into the master plan.
The uncomfortable reality is that leaders keep falling for a common corporate myth: the belief that you can achieve organisational transformation simply by changing your strategy.
The truth is much simpler, and much more human. There is simply no organisational transformation if your people’s minds are not transformed and aligned with the change that you want to bring in.
Here are the six hard truths about organisational transformation that senior management continues to ignore.
1. You Are Selling a Vision, But Your People Hear Threat
When leaders map out organisational transformation, it is a conceptual exercise. But the moment that vision is announced to employees, their immediate reaction is not excitement—it is fear.
People immediately worry about being dragged out of their comfort zones. They wonder if they will have to learn entirely new skills or if the fact that they have been struggling in their current role is suddenly going to be exposed.
| What Leadership Communicates | What Employees Actually Hear |
|---|---|
| “We are pivoting strategy!” | “Is my job safe?” |
| “We must innovate faster!” | “Will my weaknesses show?” |
| “We need total alignment!” | “Am I being left behind?” |
While leadership focuses on where the company is going, they forget to reassure staff about what remains stable. If you want your team to stretch for the future, you must first lower their defences by reassuring them that their roles and foundations are secure.
2. One-Off Training Just “Cements the Crack”
When operational issues bubble up during a major shift, companies usually rush to throw money at a single workshop to plug a temporary gap.
I remember being brought in by a client who insisted, “Sheila, our managers are constantly clashing. We need a conflict resolution workshop right away!”
Having spent years probing for facts as a journalist, I began asking deeper questions. It quickly transpired that conflict was not the actual issue at all. The real problem was structural: communication had collapsed, teams were operating in isolation, and cliques were forming because no one understood where the team was heading.
Running a quick conflict workshop would have been like putting a fresh layer of cement over a deep structural crack in a wall. It hides the issue briefly, but the foundation is still shifting. Real organisational transformation requires moving past temporary plasters and committing to a holistic two-to-three-year development path.
3. Without a Coaching Infrastructure, Inspiration Dies Fast
Training effectiveness always follows a sinusoidal wave. At first, everyone leaves the room energised, holding shiny new tools. But then reality sets in, work piles up, and motivation takes a sharp dip.
To bridge that dip, you need a sustained coaching infrastructure. In one organisation we worked with, we trained senior managers to become coaches to peers in entirely different departments. By giving them structured coachees for six months, those managers naturally brought coaching tools back to their own teams. Screaming stopped, communication opened up, and new behaviours finally hardened into habits.
4. Transformation Must Start at the Top
It is easy for leadership to sit in a boardroom and declare, “I already know where we need to go; the problem is that my people need training.”
With all due respect, organisational transformation must start at the very top. Senior executives cannot expect their middle managers and front-line staff to adopt a new mindset if they themselves have not gone through the process to align with it.
Personal development does not end when you reach the C-suite. Leaders need the coaching and strategic communication skills to translate the vision into meaningful dialogue, rather than simply dumping new targets on unready teams.
5. Strategy Fails Until It Touches Personal Values
The true catalyst for genuine organisational transformation is not a key performance indicator; it is personal alignment.
During our interactive sessions, the real breakthroughs happen when participants map the work back to themselves. When individuals uncover their own core values and see how those values connect directly to their daily work, you see the lightbulbs go off.
That personal “aha” moment is what turns passive compliance into genuine commitment. When employees feel personally aligned, the positive energy ripples through their departments and transforms the entire workplace culture.
6. Human-First Transformation Yields Hard Business Results
Putting people before strategy is not a soft, feel-good approach—it delivers tangible, measurable business outcomes.
When organisations shift their focus to transforming their people, inter-departmental silos break down naturally. Team members who once threatened to resign over toxic management suddenly choose to stay, grow, and earn promotions. Process bottlenecks get solved collaboratively because people finally feel safe enough to speak up, share ideas, and drive real business success together.
“There will be no organisational transformation if your people’s minds are not transformed and aligned with the change that you want to bring in.”
If this dynamic sounds familiar to what your team is navigating right now, let’s chat. Send a quick message to our team at Human Equation, and let’s figure out how to bring the human element back into your strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do most corporate transformations fail despite having a solid strategy?
A strategy on paper is only as strong as the psychological safety of the people tasked with executing it. When leadership announces major shifts without addressing implicit fears—such as job security or competence gaps—employees default to self-preservation rather than innovation. True alignment requires bridging this communication gap early through transparent dialogue and structured coaching intervention, ensuring your workforce feels equipped rather than threatened by the transition.
How can leadership tell if employees are stuck in “The Dip” during a shift?
Look for subtle operational friction rather than open resistance. When teams enter the dip, productivity typically stalls, decision-making becomes defensive, and enthusiasm wanes into silent compliance. You will often notice cross-departmental silos hardening as individuals focus solely on immediate output to avoid showing weakness. Recognising these behavioural signals early allows leaders to step in with targeted support before fatigue sets in and initiatives derail.
What is the fastest way to align company culture with a new business strategy?
Culture does not shift through executive mandates or town-hall presentations; it changes when daily habits and incentives adapt. Start by identifying high-influence team leaders across all tiers and equipping them to model the new behaviours natively. By addressing the human friction points directly and celebrating small wins along the adoption curve, organisations can move past temporary excitement and establish a sustained, long-term habit across the entire enterprise.
Transcript: How To Master Workplace Feedback
Transcript: Transforming Organisations By Transforming People
Show: Raise Your Game (BFM 89.9)
Host: Freda Liu
Guests: Sheila Singam (Human Equation) and Remilla Seereederan.
Freda: Good morning. This is Freda Liu. It’s Raise Your Game. Sheila Singam from Human Equation is back because it is the last Friday of the month. Happy Chinese New Year.
Sheila: Same to you, Freda.
Freda: Today, we’re going to do things a little differently, and it’s about Transforming Organisations by Transforming People. I should also mention that she’s here with a business partner and a training solutions consultant, Remilla Seereederan. And very interesting that you should bring this up about how organisations need to be transformed, but you’ve got to transform the people first. But we know that, though.
Sheila: Yeah.
Freda: Yeah, we do.
Sheila: We do. But are we doing it? I really don’t know whether a lot of people do know that, because usually the idea of organisational transformation, change, innovation—it’s a concept. It’s very conceptual, right? And someone’s got these ideas of how we want to do it and why we need to do it. Well, what they often leave out of the equation when they plan programmes and projects with the end in mind, is they often forget that the people need to be convinced; they need to get the buy-in into this, and some of them might just not be prepared, right?
Now when you talk about transformation and change, the first thing that many people think about is, “Oh my God, is this going to drag me out of my comfort zone?” Right? What do I have to change? Do I have to acquire more skills? Is the fact that I’ve just killed so much going to show up if I’m asked to go and perform other tasks and projects? So, the first reaction many people have towards transformation and change, when you say the company wants to go in a new direction, is fear.
Freda: Okay.
Sheila: Okay. So, we’re all very entrenched in our comfort zone. So, there’s a lot of fear, and many companies, when they talk about going in a new direction, often focus on where we’re going and the rah-rah about why we’re going and what’s going to change. But very often, they forget to reassure people that lots of things are still going to remain the same, right? Your salary is going to remain the same—maybe a little better if we do better, right? And your job scope is going to be pretty much the same. We just want you to stretch a little bit so that together, when everybody stretches a bit, the stretch factor for the organisation itself is multiplied many times.
Freda: Right. And I guess it is Chinese New Year—well, almost over right now, and everybody’s been—I’m sure you’ve been talking to people—they say, “Oh, we’ll do everything after Chinese New Year.”
Sheila: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s like Chinese New Year signifies the beginning of the year, and it does for many companies, you know? So, they have been saying, “Come talk to us after Chinese New Year,” because that’s when they’re beginning to plan their learning solutions, training development programmes, and also whatever transformational programmes they want to do.
And for us at Human Equation, whenever people come to talk to us about new ways of strategic thinking and transformation, our speciality lies in actually going and convincing the people that, “Hey, this is going to be a good thing.” That’s where we apply our tools for transformation in really changing the mindset and getting the people motivated, getting them out of the comfort zone and past the fear to be able to want to participate in this entire programme.
Freda: And I guess I’ll just pose this to both of you. Isn’t this also just a training needs analysis? They always say TNA; you come in and say, “We need this, we need this.” Isn’t that just part of a training needs analysis anyway?
Sheila: Well, a training needs analysis—there are two ways of looking at it. One is a very formal one where you do it at an organisational level, and it involves a lot of work and there’s many people involved. So, sometimes companies don’t want to invest in the cost of doing an organisational training needs analysis, although every three to five years, an organisation should do it because then you can embark on a plan. In my experience, Freda, using your budget to do a one-off training to plug a hole gap is just a temporary measure. What organisations need to start looking at is an approach which would take maybe a three-to-five-year development plan that is aligned and ties in with your plans for the organisation, for transforming your organisation. Yeah.
And then you have the sort of informal training needs. Sometimes companies call me in and they want a particular programme to solve a particular need. Let’s say conflict resolution. “I want a conflict resolution programme, Sheila.” Right? So, I go in there, and I guess the advantage I bring to a situation like that is my journalistic experience where, as journalists, we learn to probe and probe until we get the information we want. So, I’ll ask them a lot of questions, and then it will transpire that actually the programme they need might not be really so much of a conflict resolution as such, because that is just like cementing the crack. So, what we need to do is to address the underlying crack, and usually it’s about the way the team is reacting and operating.
So, then I go and find out what are the issues among the team; sometimes you’ll find there are silos, there are gangs going on, there’s communication issues, and people do not have an understanding of where the team is going and its contribution. So, what I would go and do is find out and then give an overall approach. And usually, what will happen at the end of it is that the programme that we conduct will be more than just a conflict resolution, right? It will be just pulling the team together, giving them communication skills, skills in how to interact to get the most out of each other and out of the team. And then it might just turn out to be several programmes that will actually bring them together as a team. And usually when you do that, then there’s no more conflict really. So, they really do need a conflict resolution programme. So, there’s so many ways of looking at how to do a training needs analysis.
Freda: All right. And then right after this, we’ll talk about the relationship and real case scenario of how you’ve actually helped organisations. I’m here with Sheila Singam from Human Equation together with Remilla, training solutions consultant. Stay tuned to Raise Your Game, BFM 89.9.
Commercial break: Build Fortunes Modestly. BFM 89.9.
Freda: Good morning. This is Raise Your Game. Freda Liu here speaking to Sheila Singam from Human Equation and Remilla Seereederan, a training solutions consultant working together with Sheila. Our topic today is transforming organisations by firstly transforming people. I know we were just discussing earlier how sometimes when people call training consultants to solve an issue, it is always something deeper underneath, right? And I know that this is a partnership that you all have developed over the years, and Remilla was involved with the company previously and gotten involved. Can you share a little bit about how that relationship started and what you got Sheila in for?
Remilla: Okay. Morning, Freda. The usual bit: I go into this organisation and the directors speak to me, and they give me the whole set of needs that they think the employees need to move forward. Okay. And so, I have this whole list with me and I speak to the staff, and I get another list from them. So, the whole process of interviewing consultants went through.
Freda: Okay.
Remilla: Then it comes to me meeting Sheila from Human Equation. That’s where Sheila came in with a very unique approach. I think Sheila was just sharing that she probes and probes.
Freda: She asked the same question in many different ways to get to the answer.
Remilla: Exactly. And I was caught off guard many times and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t think of it.” So, and of course my bosses were also shocked like, “Oh yeah, we didn’t think of it this way.” Which is very, very good. So, eventually what happened is that Sheila is able to come up with a holistic approach where the effectiveness of training comes in. Okay, the whole experience that happened in my previous employment is like, of course Sheila didn’t have that opportunity to meet the employees directly to find out whether these were really their needs and whether they found that this was the gap they were facing, right?
So, we did have ad hoc training. I think many training managers out there would agree with me; the bosses just barge into your office and go like, “No, this is really urgent; we need to have a communication workshop because there’s a lot of complaints coming in.” So, we did run two workshops that were very ad hoc, but the beauty of what Sheila did was gain a lot of insight from the employees directly. Okay, and this insight was then combined together with the needs that we got from the directors themselves.
Freda: Okay. So, it’s not like as if it’s a complete—so they come in saying, “Okay, we need communication skills,” and then you came on to say that it was additional things that you need. So, it wasn’t a complete change to what they wanted. So, you sort of met the needs of everybody in a way.
Sheila: We met the communication needs, and then during the process of the programme itself, a lot of other issues came out—which we then sort of fed back to the training department.
Sheila: Well, it was maybe—well, they needed coaching skills. People said, “Our bosses don’t communicate well with us. They don’t know how to talk to us, and they don’t know how to motivate us to do work.” And so then we realised that, okay, they need to be given some management and coaching skills. So, from there we proposed a coaching programme which was accepted, and we gave a lot of them coaching skills—the managers—and we gave them like six months to go a coaching infrastructure whereby each one of them was assigned what we call a client for six months. So, once a month, they would meet with that client from another department and transfer the skills and knowledge that we had given them to those clients, working with them.
And what happened after that was that we found that as a result of this, these managers who were the coaches began to sort of automatically start applying some of these coaching tools in their own department. Therefore, communication increased. We had cases of a manager whose only way of communicating was shouting and screaming at people; they stopped doing that. They stopped doing that, and that was actually enough to motivate the people: “Boss not shouting at me. So hey, she’s changed, so I like working for her now.” And then we had silos breaking down because there was inter-departmental coaching. So, I know someone in another department and now the silos between departments broke down and a lot of other things. Yeah, Remilla.
Remilla: Yeah. Speak up. They communicate, like Sheila said, because it has broke down all the silos. They could discuss and share process issues and challenges. They could brainstorm. They could actually come up with creative solutions. That whole empowering bit across the—
Freda: And it’s great. How long did it take, though? That whole transition. Three to five years?
Sheila: No, about two to three years.
Remilla: Two to three years.
Sheila: We started seeing it at the end of the first year when we finished the first batch of communication.
Freda: And that’s important, because people always think it’s going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen overnight.
Remilla: They actually went through a transition, because when you have a training programme, they go like, “Oh, I have all these tools!” And they’re like, “Yay, I know what to do now.” But after that, they go through that whole thing—the whole thing takes a dip. It’s like a sinusoidal wave, right? So, initially they’re all excited that they have the tools, and then after that they go like, “Oh, there’s a lot to do; I need to change; I’ve got to do this; I’ve got to do that.” But then that’s where most companies don’t come in with the right intervention and activities to follow through to boost up and to offer that support.
So, that’s where the entire coaching infrastructure comes in, and whatever tools that you’ve already learned, you’re actually continuously transferring it to a coachee, and it’s actually closely monitored by Sheila. So, it’s like any point of time the coach themselves don’t really know how to react or how to assist the coachee, they come back to Sheila. So, it’s like you’re going to and fro, and you’re continuously learning the skills and eventually it has become a habit.
Freda: Right.
Remilla: And they were using it with their own team, so appraisals become easier, giving new proposals becomes easier, getting the team to work together and come up with new ideas became easier. Everything started falling in place. And some who were really demotivated and about to leave the company and say like, “Oh, I hate this job. I hate my boss shouting at me. They don’t understand me. I don’t understand them.” Everything started coming.
Freda: They are still there, right?
Remilla: They’re still there and they’re growing. In fact, recently I heard they even got promoted. So, the teams are growing. They actually meeting business needs.
Freda: Okay. And when you say you were coaching, were you coaching everybody or just senior management and the key leaders?
Sheila: It was GMs and AGMs.
Freda: Right.
Sheila: Yeah. But we eventually managed—we went down to manager level. So, we started with the highest level, the GMs and AGMs. Then we coached another batch, and then we sort of cascaded down some of the concepts to executives, because I strongly believe that very often it’s like senior management decides, “Oh, we need this training and we need that training; go and do.” And we go in and do the training. But then they themselves, senior managers themselves, they need to understand what the training was about so that they are aligned with the direction the training brings.
Freda: Okay, and I’m sure you’ve met organisations who are not open to this. What’s holding them back? Fear?
Sheila: I think it’s just the feeling of senior management that they know it all: “Oh, I know it; I don’t need the training; the problem is my people.” But very often, with all due respect, not all companies are like that, but very often the problem lies with them.
Yeah. And I’ll tell you this, Freda: in terms of personal development, it doesn’t matter how old you are or how senior you are. Everyone can benefit by learning and being reminded of the things that you already know. I’ve had people who come to my programmes very senior, with a great learning attitude, right? I’m like, they’re in their 50s and very senior in the organisation, and they say, “I still learned something new,” or, “I know all this; I forgot and it’s—I’ve been reminded of this.”
And I really believe that if you’re starting transformation in an organisation, usually the idea for the transformation or what we want to do starts with the senior management, right? We should start off by doing programmes where they are very clear in what they want, where they want to go, and then go down to the lower levels and transfer that information and then prepare the people. Because obviously the senior management team, if they come up with the ideas, they’re already prepared for the change, but they need to be taught on how to actually translate all of this so that they can effect change in the mindset of their people to be able to buy in.
Usually you come and say, “Oh, I want this; I’ve got a three-year plan; profits have to go this way; we’re expanding.” And people are like, “Huh? This has just been thrown at us.” Nobody asked us; nobody had conversations with us. And that’s what we do; we go and give the senior management team the skills—the coaching skills, the strategy thinking skills—to be able to manage this change at all levels. Because fundamentally, you have to understand that there will be no organisational transformation if your people’s minds are not transformed and aligned with the change that you want to bring in.
And that’s actually what we specialise in. We actually work with people; we work with people empowering people, motivating people, getting them to change their mindset to embrace change, to drop the barrier of fear and to just be open to change. Of course, sometimes some people might not embrace it right out, but they’re open towards it. If they’re not scared about it, that’s half the battle.
Remilla: While Sheila was actually running the programme, I’m there observing their body language and what they’re gaining. And I can tell you it’s an aha moment for them, especially when most of the tools—when Sheila starts off the programme, a lot of the tools is about themselves. So, they were actually finding themselves and then realising like, “Oh, these are my actual values,” and then they map it back with their job and then that continuously impacts their team, their department, and eventually—
Freda: It is really an aha moment.
Remilla: Yeah. It is; it is very much and you see it over and over again.
Freda: So yes, transforming organisations by first transforming people.
Sheila: That’s right.
Freda: Thank you for being with us today; the ladies Sheila Singam from Human Equation together with Remilla Seereederan, training solutions consultant. This is Raise Your Game, BFM 89.9.
