In today’s digital economy, your business should be prepared to adapt and open doors. If you don’t, you will lose a competitive edge. Modern organizational change accounts for all facets of the operations, including the technology that drives them.
The question becomes: Who in the business is held responsible for this process?
IT people drive the technology aspect of organizational change…right?
Stop right there.
Sure, this is a useful starting point in terms of strategic planning, as well as execution of the roadmap; however, it is not ultimately where the transformation tends to originate!
The adoption of digital strategies ultimately has to be a top-down process. That includes the CEO, CMO, CFO, and CIO…not just your IT director or team.
Here we explain why the C-Suite level leadership is actually responsible for driving organizational change and digital transformation.
Willingness To Evolve
There are a couple of factors that underlie successful digital transformations in business. These are significant components of any improvement in business maturity.
The first: Planning and preparation. This includes all the project roadmapping for modernization and streamlining. It starts with identifying your inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement.
The second: Ensuring that leadership is ready, willing, and able to serve as an agent for change.
Company leadership should be prepared to provide strategic direction and add value to the process outlined in the first of these steps. If they aren’t able to provide adequate insight and support, it is so important that they recognize that. From there, they can find resources to assist with the IT strategy and management.
Roadmapping
In order for an organization to develop what capabilities are needed to make and keep up with changes, leaders need to foster an environment where this is welcomed. The leaders themselves, including C-suite level IT, should be prepared to nurture and support initiatives outlined by a plan. Whether the IT planning process is outsourced or shared or internal, decisionmakers absolutely must develop a roadmap that covers more than just the technical side of the story.
A solid roadmap will:
- Ensure that the IT processes involved are relevant to overarching business objectives in terms of both output and outcomes.
- Account for costs and performance, and builds in capabilities to deliver transparency to all parties involved on this front
- Involves educated forecasting in order to be be able to respond continually to business needs and adapt as initiatives move forward.
The digital roadmap is critical to maintaining cohesion between IT planning and overall business strategic planning and growth.
Assessment of capabilities
The organization as a whole will need to be focused on the goals sand changes involved in getting where they seek to go.
Identifying what is needed is the first stage, which should be done outside of any consideration of current capabilities since this is really more of a “blue sky” ask. A network assessment and business discovery is extremely valuable at this stage.
Determine to what extent your current IT resource or team can offer the deliverables defined in the scope of the roadmap. This is a critical step. Audit the capabilities of your tools and teams in order to identify how you will need to supplement or upgrade those to reach your goals.
The last step, which should not precede the others listed here, is to bring in new talent or technologies, or to develop existing ones to meet needs and goals.
Prioritize the collaborative nature of the process!
This methodical approach will help to ensure that your organization, by way of its leadership, is ready for organizational change and digital transformation.
We are experienced in all of the above-mentioned steps and can help you identify your resources, define your needs, and lay down your roadmap to reaching your goals.
Get in touch with us!
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