Why do most Technology Programs fail? & Strategies to avoid failures!

Introduction – Manish Gupta (Group CIO of Aditya Birla Group) & I had interesting conversations in our ClarITea Chat last year on reasons behind failure of?IT programs to deliver the intended ROI. We discussed the various human factors &?management issues responsible for the low success rate. We also loved discussing first principles in team building.

Edition 2 of "Transformation Clarity by JCB" is going to be little longer than first edition. However I am sure you are going to love my efforts to bring in 1 hour conversations into a 7-10 mins read for you here.

In case you wish to watch the whole episode here is the link to the complete ClarITea chat episode . Let us get started now.

Recap : Low IT Programs Success: giving purpose to ClarITea Chats

83% of IT programs fail to deliver the intended ROI.

1)???Complexity of the Industry

Managing IT is immensely complex. IT has to cover all the processes across the organisation as you have to enable all functions with technologies to speed up their processes.

Managing IT requires equal finesses in technology and business processes. Across the organisation. That makes it much harder than other functions.

2)???Nascent Management Function

Other management functions like HR or finance or manufacturing or supply chain are at least 200 years old. These date back to industrial revolution. IT as a management function dates back to ERP era (30 years) and Digital Transformation is just <10 years old.

There is less formal+relevant pedagogy; nor it is so well deployed as courses or management practices.

If this wasn't enough - IT is also the fastest changing domain. What you implement today can be obsolete in 5 years!

3)???Asymmetry of Talent?

Majority of the talent sits on the sell/deliver side in product and service companies. Less than 5 to 10% of technology talent sits on the enterprise side.

The talent to realise business value is much outnumbered by the sell/deliver side talent. The capabilities are on supply side. Traditional command and control approaches won't work with IT partners - they are simply more capable than your team - the hard truth!

You need to partner with IT providers to get the best out of them; not treat them as typical vendors.

4)???High Incremental Margins

Transformation potential and inevitability of adopting technologies makes it a high margin industry. There is intense sales and marketing which makes it harder to take decisions.

Sales intensity is visible in the number of IT conferences and webinars that happen around us - more than one sponsored event a day. On most of the days.

Strategies to make IT Programs a Success

I set out to discuss these challenges with Manish - how does he manage to be much higher than 17%? What can we learn from his experience?        

1)???Think and Dream Big

The very first step to succeed is to think big even while you may execute in small chunks. The big picture is important.

Whether you take the approval of Rs. 2 crores or you take the approval of 50 crores, the process is the same. You'll be asked the same questions, you'll have to explain the same logic. So don't go asking for 2 crores, ask for 50 crores.

The bigger the proposal, the higher up it will go for approvals. It will at least not die in the hands of accountants if its big. The higher the visibility, higher the sponsorship, which betters its chances of success.

2) Acid Test for Programs?

To make a successful program right at the early stage that is at the design stage every program has to go through acid tests. Having that conviction is the first step in any acid test.

Manish Gupta very well specified the first rule of the Acid test - Are you convinced about what you are doing? If you are an entrepreneur, will you do it? If it was your own company would you do it? 50% answer comes from that, because you will know intuitively yes! we got to do this.

There are some basic questions that we need to ask

• is there a sponsor - an owner of program?
• is there a proper resource allocation to programs, especially people?
• are the people being affected really going to use it?

Ask hard questions - resources, ownership, change - upfront. Put a program to acid test before.

3)???Shadow IT - IT cannot have Monopoly

As an IT department we think IT is something we should only be doing and nobody else has a right to do IT. That's like a monopoly over IT.

Anybody else who does it, they call it shadow IT. For example?with cloud the BUs choose to launch their campaigns on cloud leading to shadow IT.

Manish's view is that everything which is being done for the sake of business is legitimate, so let's stop calling anything as illegitimate or Shadow IT. Now there could be many risks involved, like security, proper standards not being followed, etc. but that is always a challenge.

For example, for cloud you can talk to the cloud provider and say that you can tell business to go through me for an enterprise agreement. Set enough control points to ensure that at least IT is aware what data is hosted on the cloud, because it is the enterprise property.

We get into this idea of controlling everything and trying to be monopolistic and feel everybody else is in the shadow IT.

Everything which is being done for the sake of business is legitimate, so let's stop calling anything as illegitimate or Shadow IT

4)???Adopt an Inclusive Approach

The creation of a team is very important. You can have a few people from the same organisation who know about the company, project, or application beforehand. Then there can be people from your partner or hired from outside.

Few points to keep in mind for smooth functioning:

●?????First, decide how much of the work is going to be handled by the team internally and how much it is going to come from an external perspective.

●?????If you hire someone from an external perspective, it is very important to tell them about the company about the project so that they feel involved and see the larger picture.

●?????Never differentiate between your own people versus the people coming from an external party.

Once the project is started everyone should feel they are working to build a home not just a wall or pillar.

5)????Network without Social Networking?

One of the important aspects of success today, especially when you're a leader, is networking, You have to network with your stakeholders, partners and everybody out there. But building a superficial relationship with your connections is of no use.

Having a meaningful and deeper relationship with your connections is most important. One way to build that is through one-on-one relations with your connection and add value to their life.

Having a meaningful and deeper relationship with your connections is most important.

6)???Architect for Vision??

It's very difficult to foresee the vision completely and especially the strategy part. Many people say that IT follows the strategy. It is not always the case because, by the time you follow, it's already too late.

Create the Lego blocks of technology - Whenever the vision emerges, you're ready for it, You're ready to execute, you're ready to respond. Nowadays, new businesses are emerging day by day.

How do you respond to a changing need? How do you respond to either a business model coming up or a new business coming up?

So the answer is simple: keep the Lego blocks ready. Don't make it hard-coded but keep them in a way that if they have already been used, you're ready to reuse them.

Before trying something new, look back into the repository- what can I reuse??

7) Relationship with Business Leaders

Our relationship with the business is about having the right lingo & setting pragmatic expectations. We have to identify who are the roadblocks or detractors. Then take them through an experience which?changes their mindset. On their business requirements, we have to get them principle driven answers, rather than give them hacks or shortcuts this way or that way.

Engage your business leaders in an experience which influences them to change the mindset.

8)???Be Humble to Learn and Evolve Continuously

We should not always nod heads that we understand. Try to be humble to accept that we don’t know or we don’t understand. Maybe some kid may know about it. So you can go to him/her and ask and learn rather than trying to feign that we know it all.

I think humility goes a long way as well as acceptance of the fact that today's generation is far more learned in technology. This is the basic concept of Reverse Mentoring, and you can even collaborate to learn a few skills.

Today's generation is far more adept at technology. Seek Reverse Mentoring and collaborate to learn new skills.

Summary

To summarise it all, there is a lot of scope for the failure of IT programs, but it can be avoided by proper knowledge and implementation. Say yes to organisation priorities and you will always succeed.

Light up the big ideas, always think and dream big. You can achieve milestones if you think and dream of achieving them.

Always have your acid test ready before starting new programs.

Networking is important. Have a deeper relationship with people, a more meaningful relationship than just going by plain vanilla social networking.

Have the right lingo with business stakeholder and set right expectations. Influence through experience - you cannot force change.

At last, humility to keep learning,?follow the vision or strategy, create Lego blocks of technology, create reusability in the enterprise and so that you are able to spawn solutions out of what already exists with you, into anything new that the business wants to do.

About the Author?

Jagdish Belwal is CIO turned global advisor on business growth using technology and digitalisation. He is also the founder of FlocknGo startup. He had been investing in tech startups and is a regular speaker & conference moderator at various national and international platforms. His ClarITea Chat show brings out wisdom of CIOs of top organisations and is popular with the IT fraternity on Linkedin & Youtube. His podcasts are soon going to be available on all major podcasting platforms. He can be reached out for advisory, investing, training and conference moderation on [email protected]??