Taking the Leap: How Leaders Can Leverage Technology to Go from Good to Great

I'm not one to spend my time talking about winners and losers. I'd much rather spend my time talking about the progress I see in the world. This view is particularly the case when it comes to companies that fuel their growth by making smart, creative use of the technology platforms that serve as the foundations of their businesses.

The technological progress that companies have made over the past 18 months—progress that started before the pandemic and then kicked into hyper-speed at its onset—has been stunning. Naturally, every company and every industry started from a different place when the pandemic hit, which means that most leaders find themselves navigating a different phase of this ongoing digitization of operations. But for the most part, I'm happy to say that a lot of what I'm seeing is not about companies clawing for survival. It's about good companies looking to become great.

In looking to elevate a business from good to great, businesses are putting a tremendous amount of focus into moving more of their functions and operations into the cloud. As a result, we're seeing a wholesale transformation taking place as it relates to the role of the CIO. No longer are these executives simply laying the brickwork of a company's IT systems. The modern-day CIO is now a change agent—a powerful force within the organization who is being increasingly empowered to invest in platform-driven change. Through their investments, they're building the infrastructures that enable organizations to drive real, sustainable improvements.

Not Just Leading, But Leapfrogging

Of course, it's always nice to be able to point toward real, quantifiable proof that these kinds of investments make a difference. In Accenture’s recent report, “Make the Leap, Take the Lead,” we found that leading companies that have doubled down on technology are now growing five times faster than those that have not. Specifically, we identified a group of companies that have become “leapfroggers”—organizations that are quickly surpassing their peers and catching up to category leaders by virtue of how they’re allocating their tech budgets and realigning their priorities.?

You might be surprised about how achievable this all is. The potential for transformation lies within every enterprise, and their progress doesn't have to come at the expense of another organization's loss. That’s the beauty of it. To help companies get started, we identified three strategic imperatives at the heart of leapfroggers’ success:

Replatforming: For starters, leapfroggers are heavily focused on replatforming. What does that mean exactly? As we’ve alluded to, this entails pumping more resources into the tech platforms that have the largest impact on your business operations, and then leaning in by focusing on making continuous enhancements. You can’t do everything at once, of course. But if you can identify the platforms that really move the needle, you’ll actually free up funds that can go towards innovation, while increasing flexibility and responsiveness. But that’s just step one.?

Reframing: Here’s where things get radical, and maybe a bit uncomfortable. It’s time to flip your firm’s approach to IT on its head and put much more of your company’s future in the CIO’s hands. In this reframing, IT is viewed as a competitive asset –and that means shifting budget allocations, with 70 percent of IT spend going toward new tech and the remainder being used to keep the lights on. This is the opposite approach of most non-Silicon-Valley companies. ?

Reach: Of course, we're not just talking about technology. Leapfrogging, at its core, requires a cultural shift—one that enables people to break away from a "business as usual" mindset and embrace the needed behavior change in order to recruit and retain the best people and increase productivity. This cultural shift means finding ways to reward people for taking risks, embracing new ways of working, and overall becoming more fluid in the way they think about their team structures, work environments and locations, and technology. Particularly in light of changing work patterns, companies now need to embrace hybrid environments and more options for employees. ?

People naturally become wedded to the way they work, and that includes the tools and technology they use. Only by shifting culture can we hope to empower people to transform the way in which they think about and perform their day-to-day tasks.

In tandem with this cultural shift, organizations can unlock the power of their platforms by putting the technology in the hands of all their people, not just a few. Leapfroggers extend their reach by opening technology access across functions and investing in their people's careers and well-being. They provide their people the training and access they need to implement real changes and master the skills they will need for the new ways of working.

This cultural change is a core requirement when it comes to empowering CIOs as change agents. Imagine, for example, if Blockbuster had empowered its CIO to chart the company's future at that vital moment when the video rental model was in a state of upheaval. We might well imagine that the company would have spent less time worrying about maintaining its stores and physical DVD advantage, and instead reframed its entire business toward streaming technology. Yes, this would have required bold leadership, a major shift in the way the company spent its money, and Blockbuster’s vast employee base to be trained for a digital-centric model. None of this would have been easy, but given its brand and footprint at the time, such a pivot could have positioned Blockbuster to become a streaming titan, well before Netflix became a household name.

We are seeing similar crossroads moments play out in other industries today, particularly as platforms take center stage and CIOs become true agents of change.?

Take the supermarket chain Carrefour Group for example. Prior to COVID-19, the company had already poured 2.8 billion euros in its digital transformation efforts and forged partnerships with companies like Google to create innovation labs and reinvent the customer experience. Thus, when the world started shopping for groceries online en masse in 2020, Carrefour enjoyed growth of more than 70 percent in food commerce, achieving 2.3 billion euros in revenue. The company is currently on track to reach its 4.2 billion euros target by 2022.

I promise you, it’s not too late to make the same kind of jump. I admit that the process isn't for the faint of heart. It requires bold thinking, serious commitment and strong leadership. But in the process of taking this leap, you'll be moving your business toward a far more sustainable future—one that moves beyond short-term wins and lays the foundation for fostering innovation, collaboration and teamwork from within.?