Archives For Disruption

What is Digital Transformation? & Why do I need to embrace it?

October 29, 2015 — 1 Comment

Preface:

Digital (adj) the predominate use of Internet, Mobile & Internet of Things technology platforms to radically improve Customer Engagement, Collaboration & Operational Efficiencies.

Transformation (noun): a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance; a process by which one function is converted into another that is equivalent in some important respect but is differently expressed or represented.

Body:

Digital Transformation has become the de jour subject to espouse your beliefs on in 2015. As such, I felt obliged to add my voice to this chorus. Hopefully readers will agree once they have read this.

Digital is one of the key Disruption Initiatives being applied by business strategists & enterprise architects to wake-up moribund industries such as Financial Services (Banking & Insurance), Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), etc. It promises superior levels of engagement with Consumers (Customers) for a fraction of the cost of conventional (Analog) methods (Print Media, Television Advertising, etc.), amongst other strategic benefits. Considering that many of these particular industry sectors spend 5-7% of their gross revenue on marketing and branding activities it is not hard to see why the disruptive approach of Digital is so compelling & attractive to them.

On a technical level Digital speaks to the leverage of many disparate initiatives in Mobility, Internet, Applications, Security, etc. to create a suite of capabilities all focused on Customer & Collaboration. It allows IT functions to create an integrate delivery stream which they can manage end-to-end.

In spite of deep spending on Digital Transformation endeavors, payback still seems illusive for most. Like most Transformational endeavors, Digital is not immune from the intrinsically high rates of program failure & disappointing strategic outcomes. In most cases this is directly attributable to abysmal (dis-engaged) Leadership by the CEO and Board (who cheerlead, rather than take hands-on accountability) and overall poor execution by Consultants who sell Transformation Methodologies & Services to these same leaders. Given the stakes one should ask, “Why is this?” These are my thoughts on the “Why”.

CEO’s and Boards use Transformation as a strategic tool to move a well-established organization out of its current doldrums and into a leadership position once again. It is a black art for the most part as most of these same people rarely understand how to execute Transformational Change and typically bet the farm (so to speak) on Consultants and hucksters i.e. Thought Leaders, who sell transformation as the “cure to all that ails” with the proviso of “Trust us, we will handle all the details”. The failure rate and associated costs of these failures has become so high (and contentious) that all of the top tier consultancies now require their customers to sign gag orders which forbid them from going public about these debacles, much less requiring private arbitration to resolve all contractual/financial disputes. Given this, most Transformation Programs seem doomed from the start.  Digital Transformation is no different in this regard and yet I firmly believe that it is imperative for all Organizations (Private, Public and Not for Profit) to embrace this paradigm shift. The primary rationale for this is the fact that it forces these same Organizations to abandon their backward-looking, gut-based decision making & customer engagement endeavors in favor of evidence-based & “always on” approaches, key components of a Predictive Enterprise. In my advisory endeavors I have always counseled senior executives & boards to “never waste a crisis” in respect to fostering real (transformational) change in your business model and culture and see the pursuit of Digital as such an opportunity. Without a compelling impetus Organizations’ can barely muster marginal or incremental change successfully.

Digital Transformation can provide a unique opportunity to realize the benefits of becoming a Predictive Enterprise while changing the dynamic between the Organization and its Customers (constituents), Partners & Suppliers. It portends to be the single most dramatic overall change that any established Organization can pursue as it breaks its many ties with the status quo and truly transforms.  The key to success is Leadership from the Top-Down (CEO & Board), an Engaged Culture and embracing Digital Outcomes (data, analytics, etc.) as Core Competencies and not IT functions. Digital Transformation is synonymous with what I have evangelized in The Data Leadership Nexus in this regard.

*-An edited version of this posting first appeared as an article in the March 2015 issue of Information Age (UK)

In Leadership , , , , , , , ,
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Leadership & Disruption

January 12, 2015 — 1 Comment

I wrote this article for Information Age in the Summer of 2014. It was only available to print/online subscribers, but given my continued focus on Top-Down Data Leadership as a catalyst for creating a Predictive Enterprise I thought that I would share it with my blog readers. It was written for the CIO’s in the audience whom I see as an endangered species at this point.

Leadership in the Age of Disruptive Change

Leadership is a much-touted attribute, highly desired by aspiring entrepreneurs as well as within mature organizations. Much has been written about its virtues and boot camps have been created in respect to “transforming yourself into one”. However, in spite of these endeavors, few current much less future leaders/influencers have been trained in the art of “Leading during disruption”.

What is Disruption? (And yes, it has become a noun). It is the disruption of the status quo by out innovating and out executing an established standard[1]. It typically consists of new offerings that are “good enough” and at a much lower price point. A salient example of this is “the Cloud”.

Clay Christensen (Harvard Business School) launched the Age of Disruption with his seminal work “The Innovators’ Dilemma” in 1997 followed by many other writings & opinions on this subject up to the current date. His work has created a new management & planning paradigm, which has crept into almost every aspect of strategic thinking today. A new credo of “Disrupt or be disrupted” is being taught in every Business School across the globe and drives activities within every organization today.

By now you are probably asking: “How does this impact Leadership, much less in the IT domain?” Good question. IT Management today (executive and line) is all about maintaining the status quo across the enterprise while struggling to improve service levels and fight off cyber threats, while being constrained with finite resources and budget. There is little bandwidth (or money) for innovation or any incremental efforts. By definition it is an area that is prime for disruption.

There are a number of disruptive forces attacking IT Management today, not just the movement to the Cloud, which is primarily an infrastructure play. Other forces include; Big Data & Analytics, IoT, Mobility, IT Service Management, Cyber Security to name several. All of these have created a “perfect storm of disruption” for current CIO’s and IT Managers to contend with. Given that the majority of IT Leaders have grown up in a culture of building and maintaining applications and services within small to large enterprises it is no surprise that they are ill equipped to contend with the idea that their familiar world being turned on its head, in many cases by their own customers and not just by external forces in the IT vendor community. Change of belief sets and behaviors while under the duress of Disruption is not easily achieved, much less comfortable for any Leader. It requires abandoning much of what they have learned and experienced along the way and embracing new Leadership disciplines on the fly. As a result we have seen many IT Leaders exhibit a form of knee-jerk behavior where they are creating new “czar like” roles within their organizations to focus on data, analytics, security, technology, etc. while they wrestle with the complexities of disruption. This approach can provide some short-term relief from but creates leadership anarchy over time as these czars lobby for power and control.

What is required are true Transformational Leaders in IT during this time of disruption as the organization moves from a solutions-driven paradigm to an outcome-based one. In a majority of cases these leaders will come from outside of IT, with many having different career backgrounds and industry sector experience. All will have zero investment in the status quo and will be merciless to those who remain invested in it.

Leading IT in the Age of Disruption requires new leadership skills, few of which can be taught, most being learned by surviving previous waves of upheaval. Battle tested leaders and not IT bureaucrats will lead outcome driven organizations in the near future. Be prepared.

 

Some Parting Thoughts:

The IT Organization of the Future is one where services are delivered in support of strategic, tactical and operational outcomes. These services will be transparent to the organizations’ infrastructure and independent of its business model, with little interface to what many call “the legacy estate”. Few expect to see the large IT organization as it is constituted today, it having been replaced by a relationship model driven by facilitators and business advocates.

Becoming a Disruptive Leader is not a straightforward journey, no matter your background. It requires the embrace of wholesale change, the nurturing of innovative thinking and behavior and the management of outcomes rather than resources. It requires a personal transformation that many will choose not to make.

[1] A permanent or long-lasting thing.

In Business Transformation, Information Governance, Information Management, Leadership , , , ,
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