Tech-breakthroughs: disruptive ? additive ? both ?
Harness disruptive tech itself to power your transformation journey then drive value at scale
Transformations are hard. With the unrelenting pace of newer and more powerful capability released quicker and quicker, the time to onboard and leverage them is shrinking. Transformation "programs" or "templates" as of just three years ago, no longer work. The next breakthrough will be in the market by the time you onboard your partners.
One cannot "download" a new tech, and be done without working differently. But, we cannot change the organization's structure or constraints over-night. So, we combine agile thinking, systems thinking, with empiricism to start small, and evolve to such a compelling value prop - it has to be done. There are no real "check-lists" here.
Once value is seen, and organic demand emerges from your LOB leaders, we can then "recognize" the manner in which the transformation was achieved, and anoint it as the "new" way of doing transformations. To quote a known axiom, "its often better to get forgiveness than permission". But lets phrase that positively and how we do it. "Its better to prove the value early with little risk or allocation, and drive outcomes as they emerge".
Tech transformations today are more about harnessing emergence than contractual "accountability" between the sponsor and the enterprise which does not allow for agility, but, causes perverse incentives to "fit the objective", on paper. That wastes everyone's energy, so lets call it what it is.
An apparent, but subtle reality. The larger or more regulated you are, the much longer this takes, and the "more" you need it to happen quickly, and safely:
- We help you evolve a journey that considers the whole system, value generation, change management, and buy-in. The "whole system" includes the organization, market, strategy, current conditions, operating model, human capability, training, coaching and the degree of "flex" you need to succeed.
- We take the time to understand your landscape, market, strategic plan, corporate event agenda, risk, optics, and keep all the major "pushes and pulls" in positive-tension, while moving ahead, allowing you adopt and adapt.
- We start small, low risk, prove value, explore risk as we know, and as it emerges, build controls, exploit end to end automation, then shift into a "fly-wheel" phase.
- System-wide visibility is critical. Information radiation and constant insights must be in place.
- Solid governance with "real" access to decision makers and subject matter experts particularly at discovery and launch is critical.
- By codifying policy, authority, and process changes early in end to end automation, or outright elimination, you can be positive and confident and ahead of audit. In fact, we require regulatory, compliance, governance, and those audit elements early to explain what changes they will see, ask for insights, and allow them time to be heard and adjust.
- Increasing forward movement, we move to a launch-pad that demonstrates success, builds confidence, and shifts from selling the vision to managing demand from stakeholders as news spreads. Pull is always better than Push. Ask yourself ? Did you ever see or hear an Ad from AWS when they went to market ?
- Accelerate to self-funding early, then drive real value creation. Course correcting along the way, early. Pause and resume or mix,pair the transformation as needs dictate.
- A transformation's first goal is rapid value and confidence building. The second goal is defense and agility to keep it alive and allow for delivery. Too often aspirational transformations that depend on extraordinary funding or special resourcing or priority fail because they are too "insular". The slightest change in business objectives or realities, cause it to collapse or become pilfered for "needs of the business".
How is this approach different ?
"Legacy-think"
The "Old ways" of hearing about, selecting, installing and monetizing tech breakthroughs in the organization are too "heavy" given the fluidity, emergence, and rapidity of each new capability plateau.
Linear ways of working, and gaining sell-in no longer serve the urgency and risk considerations at play.
The time between each new market tech "break-out" or disruption has been rapidly decreasing to the point where the time to onboard new tech using traditional ways forces an organization to lock-in and commit to superficial granularity, while creating a transformation "black-out" window preventing reasonable adjustment.
This approach naturally separates the technology at hand, from the nature of change it implies. Older ways conflate the tech breakthrough, with all known change, at the start, fixing the outcomes to a path which most realize isn't the best as the program executes. Since most organizations still require significant expenditure fall into "major" program requirements, older "capital-centric" financial control models dictate phases and approvals.
Recent and certainly current-day tech breakthroughs are emergent and need network-effect space & time to optimize. This is not procurement of storage, network, or compute that can be bid out using simple score-cards. It takes a radically different way of selecting the right partners, ensuring they are impacted by and incented to ensure the program outcomes come true, not just their portion of it.
You simply do not have the time to cycle through "transactional" transformation each time, just to be one step behind, and have to do it all again, or look at your market and realize what just happened while you go-live with last year's tech.