TBM Champions Assemble! Lessons on TBM Adoption from the Avengers

[Spoiler alert – if you haven’t watched Avengers: Endgame yet, there are a few plot points referenced in the post below]

Even as a kid, I was an avid reader and consumer of comic books. I was a huge fan of Daredevil, Batman, Spiderman and the Hulk (my dad teases me to this day about the shirt I destroyed at the age of 4 with my imitation of Bruce Banner's transformation to the Hulk). Even though I enjoyed the stories of these individual heroes (especially their origin stories), some of my favorite stories were about when they pooled their resources, joined up and became a super-team such as the Justice League, X-men, and yes... the Avengers! Even more incredible than their individual stories, the way they would work out their individual differences and combine their unique powers and gifts to serve a common cause always made for some of the most amazing, epic adventures of all. Avengers – Infinity Wars and Endgame exceeded my expectations (Endgame surpassed Avatar as the 2nd highest grossing movie of all time)! 

Why do we love superhero stories? I believe that while we are drawn to these characters because of their incredible powers and gifts, it is their flaws that we identify with, their individual struggles that fascinate us, and their journeys from humble beginnings to superhuman that inspire us. With that said, what lessons can we learn in Technology Business Management (TBM) adoption from the Avengers?

Lesson #1: Silos won’t work – you need a diverse team of champions! The first hour of Avengers – Infinity Wars has Thor, the god of Thunder, losing to Thanos, the Hulk, losing to Thanos, Doctor Strange, losing to Thanos, Iron Man, losing to Thanos… and ultimately, sees the Avengers coming back together to rebuild a broken team to take on the intergalactic threat that Thanos poses. With TBM, the core TBM office is not enough to ensure the success of your TBM initiative… you are likely to suffer setback after setback if you go at it alone. Unlike building your Fantasy TBM team with a focus on your organization's business leaders, you need to build a super team of TBM Champions (a.k.a., your TBM Steering Committee), with specific superpowers – leaders from IT Operations, Applications, Portfolio and Program Management, Data Governance / Analytics, IT Finance and Corporate Finance (Note: The TBM Steering Committee can extend beyond these core members to include leaders from your Procurement function and your Agile practices as well, depending on your planned use cases and strategic priorities). Bottom line: If your Technology Business Management initiatives are halted, stalled or challenged, the cause may be the lack of a TBM Steering Committee. The TBM Office is not enough to ensure you realize your Technology Business Management outcomes… you must develop your TBM Steering Committee to augment your TBM Office and drive the desired results in your organization.

Lesson #2: Obtain Buy-in by establishing your “Why” and your “WIIFMs" (a.k.a. what’s in it for me)… Without buy-in, your TBM Steering Committee is dead on arrival! Picture Nick Fury recruiting a hero to join the Avengers… there are typically two responses: enthusiastic engagement and acceptance (i.e. Spiderman comes to mind) vs. skepticism and mistrust (i.e., Ironman, Thor, Captain Marvel, etc.). When establishing your TBM Steering Committee, you should not expect enthusiastic engagement as the default reaction… instead, I’d suggest you should be prepared for skepticism and mistrust. Your job? Recruit with a powerful Why, Engage with an attractive WIIFM.

The Why: Paint a compelling, unifying vision of the cause or the challenge: While Nick Fury’s “The Earth is in danger!” talk might be a little intense for your TBM Steering Committee recruiting efforts, the mandate coming from your company’s executive leadership may be almost as compelling. Your variation of Fury’s “Why” might be “IT needs to reduce OPEX by 20% this year to fund Digital Transformation” or “We need to shift 30% of our internal labor from Run the Business to Change the Business in the next 2 years” or “We are shifting our entire organization from ‘Project’ to ‘Product’ in the next 18 months”. 

The WIFFM: Engage your TBM Champions with a clear vision of direct benefits for their functions / areas. By combining financial, operational and vendor analytics, for example, you can augment the superpowers of your Procurement leaders in managing vendor performance. By leveraging the TBM taxonomy, you can partner with your Delivery leaders to develop the total cost of a capability, product, service or team to support business cases for more investment in Agility, DevOps or increased delivery capacity. You can provide your Finance leaders unparalleled transparency into the cost of technology tied to business outcomes, enabling strategic conversations about both cost savings and investments.

With the Why, you give them a reason to join; with the WIIFM, you give them a reason to engage!

Lesson #3. Plan the work, Work the Plan! Once everyone understands the Why and the WIIFMs, it is critical that your super team unites around the strategic plan (i.e. The TBM Roadmap) to meet the challenge. While not tackling an intergalactic supervillain like Thanos, the digital transformation challenges of our time can result in disastrous results if not navigated effectively (think Barney’s, Kodak, Yellow Cab, etc.). It’s critical that everyone on your committee realize that this is an action-oriented work group and that every player is needed on the field – no benchwarmers here! The TBM Roadmap provides that plan of attack to ensure all members of your TBM Steering Committee understand exactly how the TBM Office, with their partnership and engagement, will tackle these challenges to move the needle. 

Have you launched your Technology Business Management Steering Committee? What have you learned leveraging the TBM Steering Committee on your journey?