We want everything digital and we want it now, but how do we get it?
Christine Ashton FBCS CISSP
Progressive CIDO and CISO CIO 100 and 2023 most influential in Tech
It’s okay to want to make progress fast, and boy has Covid-19 shown how you can do that. For some companies, a focus on must-have deliverables has taken years off their process digitisation objectives.
But how do you go about planning for your next tranche of digitisation and transformation when you just had most of your planning assumptions torn up? Historically and by that, I mean 6 months ago, even the best minds regarded digital transformation as a journey. And companies planned out a programme incrementally, building up capability over 3, 5 and even 7 years. Well, I’m not sure that’s going to work now.
So how do companies get more of what they want and quicker? As always, we need to break the problem down a bit into the things we can predict and those we can’t. The capabilities we can control and scale and those we can't. The things we can influence and the ones we can’t. I have tried to show this in my handy dandy chart above. The idea is that the quadrants are not equal in size, or the same for everyone. But you might have a problem if everything is in the green one!
I think part of the answer is that we need to look harder for the digital equivalent of commodity and 'As A Service' capability, the digital equivalent of 'assembled off-site' and just plugged in. Covid-19 showed we can implement even enterprise systems such as @SAP in previously only dreamed about timeframes if we want to. The tools are all there. In the short term, the idea would be to use these capabilities to make the 'Blue Box' above bigger and so creating certainty. We haven't got time to stitch things together over 3 or 5 years. I might argue that in our new world supplier commitments to deliver on published and promised roadmaps become much more important than ever. The industry tech leaders in #enterprise solutions are certainly going to be key here, with pre-integrated industry solutions playing a key tool in getting you more of what you want, by helping you to get more of your forward plan into the 'Blue Box'.
Progressive CIDO and CISO CIO 100 and 2023 most influential in Tech
4 年Thanks for your comment Robin Gardner. I think as always we need a hybrid approach. Where I have seen this done well they have taken a 2 -pronged approach. The main factor that seems to separate out the #bestrun is that they do what you describe but rather than having the functions get on with it, they have a central transformation capability to manage it and advocate collaboration across the organisation. It's similar to how many companies have run during Covid-19 with a centralised crisis team. It might feel counter-intuitive but the thinking is it's the best way to align objectives and create shared purpose.
CIO, CTO, Business & IT Strategy thought leadership
4 年Great thoughts following the thread of sustaining the can-do pace of change many have achieved in the last few months. A huge factor in this ability seems to the willingness of organisations to trust their skilled staff and trusted partners to just get on with it. Be clear with the expected outcome and allow strong leaders to deliver. Much of what has been bypassed has been layers of evidencing, meetings and process gateways that, in too many cases, were there because decision makers didn't feel comfortable trusting their own teams, or a process framework required them. Hire and retain good people and partners, be transparent with them about your challenges and expectations, apply monitoring where it is needed (making sure those monitoring have the right skills to be effective) and then trust them to deliver. And finally - trust means giving the freedom to make mistakes along the way, to be honest about them, to course correct, learn and adapt
Head - Sourcing, Competency & Governance - Salesforce Practice@TCS || Certified Independent Director || ICF Accredited & Trained Workplace Coach
4 年Love your infographic and visual representations Christine ! As always very nicely articulated and bang on... ??