Telecom & Technology Consulting
From the CEO perspective, continual transformation is essential for maintaining competitive advantage. This sentiment is true in most cases. Yet transformation, in itself, is no longer enough to remain at the top of the game.
These days, it’s all about the speed in which the transformation takes place. And that’s why CIOs are increasingly feeling more pressure to complete the initiative in shorter time spans. Finishing transformation projects quicker can be accomplished in a number of ways.
First, consider that “digital” doesn’t have to be attached to the project, as “transformation” can apply to many other elements that spur growth and profits. For example, you can transform processes, which require examining how to adjust capacity and training. “Digital” transformation is limited, as it creates the perception that the project only centers on implementing and learning new technologies.
This slight shift in mindset can go a long way to speeding up completion of the transformation – whatever you’re attempting to transform.
Be sure to fully embrace agile development. While over 70% of organizations use agile for software development, many projects don’t turn out as desired due to a certain amount of resistance among leadership. CIOs can improve transformation results by implementing more agile processes.
Transformations can also occur quicker by eliminating bureaucracy. It’s common for an organization to approve or deny a project, or aspect of a project, often due to a governing-by-committee approach. This time-wasting mentality can be erased if the organization adopts an agile mindset, where governance provides safeguards while allowing for well-informed yet rapid decisions.
Organizations would also be wise to create reusable tools and repeatable processes for the given transformation; it’s the age-old idea of not needing to reinvent the wheel every time. For example, your cloud enablement team can build and deliver APIs and pipelines to other technologists to quicken the pace of their work.
Automation may seem like a no-brainer for increasing the pace of transformations, yet you’d be surprised that many organizations aren’t using automation enough. To this end, CIOs should identity where they can implement automation into common functions. This cuts the time required for basic work, which in turn frees up teams to focus more on essential transformation tasks.
Transformations are only as successful as the amount of people who truly comprehend the rationale of the choices involved in the project. This is otherwise known as Digital Literacy. CIOs should educate employees and executives across the organization on the pros and cons of new technologies: What is the potential, what is the downside?
This is critical, as often the CIO is the only one who can answer key strategic technical or implementation questions; they’re the sole individual who can connect the dots between use of a specific tool and its role toward achieving the transformation. But with a mass of people who are digitally literate, you not only improve the power of collaboration, there are more individuals available to provide key information to others, including leaders and board members. All of which speeds up the time it takes to finish the project.
All these strategies may sound feasible on paper, yet motivating team members to act faster can be a stumbling block. As such, it’s important for the CIO to develop the right incentives. Typically, incentives will reward employees for performing common IT tasks, but they don’t inspire them to improve collaboration or work in a more proactive manner.
However, research shows that IT workers are actually curious about what takes place in others departments, and that they want to interact more with those individuals. Unfortunately, they don’t have incentives to do so.
This lack of incentive hinders innovation while creating discontentment, as people feel restricted to their specific role and responsibilities. But when CIOs provide generous incentives, IT workers will be more excited to get involved, which naturally shortens transformation completion times.
The final part of the transformation equation is hard to measure: building resiliency. By definition, the nature of these projects don’t allow for significant time for reflection and reconsideration, so IT workers must have the resolve to maintain pace. They must improve their endurance, which leads to heightened resilience.
Resilience, of course, is a subjective measurement, which requires evolving the organization’s culture from one that sees innovation as a time-to-time element to one where innovation is part of everyday operations. Resilience can be best injected by providing workers with the rationale of the transformation (e.g., the business value, enhancing productivity, etc.).
Any transformation is a journey. Success requires thorough planning with clear goals, as well as having the appropriate resources. Success takes time – but not too much of it; you need a balance. As the legendary basketball coach John Wooden said, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
