How to make tech-related decisions quickly? ?? Issue #8

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“Difficulty making quick technology-related decisions” was the number 1 challenge for CEOs in 2020, KPMG found. Why?

Those decisions were viewed as expensive, often unprecedented, subject to significant risk and long-term effects.?

In the pre-pandemic era, massive transformation projects took months, even years, to complete, and the inability to decouple those from promising business acceleration initiatives, slowed down innovation.?

In 2020, decisions HAD TO be made instantly just to maintain business as usual. As challenging as it was for business leaders, it turned out doable.?

There are dozens of ways in which technology can speed up decision making but how can you speed up decision making ON technology?

How to make tech-related decisions quickly?

Today’s answer is delivered by Marek Talarczyk , CEO at Netguru

According to Gartner, 94% of CEOs want to maintain or accelerate pandemic-driven digital endeavors. I find it crucial to help leaders understand that innovating within weeks instead of years IS possible, though it takes a certain mindset.?

At Netguru, we’ve long been analyzing companies that accelerate successfully, and we see some key differentiators between the old approach and the new:

?? Speed-to-value

Smaller initiatives, more PoCs and MVPs, short innovation and iteration cycles that ensure agility

?? Speed of adoption

Rapid time-to-market and short customer feedback loops instead of long, drawn-out implementation and feedback cycles

?? Change drivers

From keeping up with industry trends to owning the change

?? Change horizon

From an A-B transformation model to continuous experimentation

?? Type of change

From a sequential transformation to simultaneous and continuous decision-making, discovery, and delivery

?? Model of change

Surgical approach to innovation decoupled from large transformation projects

Sinking money into a project that will never pay off is every manager’s nightmare, especially in times of market volatility.

I’d never advise people to throw money at any digital project just to see where it sticks, but some risk-taking is necessary to progress. And, luckily, there are different ways to mitigate risk – but more on that another time.

Just a few more tips to start off well:

1. Accept the risk. Jorge Lopez, VP Analyst at Gartner says that the ability to take risks is critical to competing at the speed of innovation, and I couldn’t agree more.
2. Monitor the consumer goods sector. From being led by experts to being driven by consumers – businesses that want to outperform competitors stay on top of trends to pick up signals and drive differentiation in their field.??
3. Get a fresh perspective. Mulling over a decision for months? Lean on experienced consultants for a second opinion.?

Take into account the above approach to innovation and take a leap.