A CEO Drives a Digital Transformation initiative and a CIO/CTO/CDO orchestrates the Digital Transformation Project.
Romani Verma
Business & Digital Transformation Advisor - Infrastructure Technology, Business Process re-engineering, Business Model Innovation, Strategy, Revenue.
A CEO Drives a Digital Transformation initiative and a CIO/CTO/CDO orchestrates the Digital Transformation Project.
Many Companies approach digital transformation by appointing a Chief Digital/technology/information Officer. However, what experts have observed is that in any company the CEO has to lead, you cannot delegate the responsibility to a CIO/CTO/CDO. The CIO/CTO/CDO must orchestrate the digital transformation but only the CEO is able to OWN it and drive the change-importance that is required by digital. Digital Transformation is actually, business and cultural transformation and technology is only an enabler for it. For instance, any digital transformation will require the teams to work transversely. It will go against the old rules of the company to challenge the established order. Only the CEO can do that. The CIO/CTO/CDO is the one to be orchestrating that evolution.
Actually, many aspects of digital transformation go against established order. This is why the CEO has to enforce. For instance, digital usually forced the need to disrupt before getting disrupted. Some Clients say burn the boat but don’t rock the boat. Now that means to be really going against putting the company into potential heavy shift from its traditional model.
Another dimension is that you need to work bottom-up and experimental. You cannot spend Six months to think plan and then act. You need to embrace the teams to start up experimenting with a digital initiative and you have to authorize the right to fail (remember experimenting means ready to fail) because, when you launch initiatives on hundreds of dimensions with the operational team participating into that, obviously, some of them will not succeed.
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The Last dimension is that budget – surprisingly enough the budget required to enable a digital transformation. I am not generating impact within the next 12 months so that means, the usual budgeting timeline has to be overruled by the CEO, enabling investment that will be only impacting in two or three years. Appointing CIO/CTO/CDO is not the only option.
Several companies are doing different other dimensions of distributed ownership of digital. What is important is to have one area of the company that is orchestrating and keeping the coordination of a highly distributed set of initiatives. Ultimately all these activities are critical to a digital transformation but they can only get to success if there is a strong CEO endorsement and support.
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1 年Thought provoking. Let me know what's digital transformation in reality with an example Romani Verma . In case you have already written an article ,please quote the link for more awareness. Thank you in advance