connecting the workforce to the priorities of the c …...executive fellow, tuck school of business,...

(cc) Creative Commons, 2010-2019. Constellation Research, Inc. Some rights reserved. @ConstellationR

Connecting the Workforce to the Priorities of the C-SuiteHow the Future of Work Will be Shaped by Technology and Business Leaders

DION HINCHCLIFFE (@DHINCHCLIFFE)

VP & PRINCIPAL ANALYST

CONSTELLATION RESEARCH

ZDNet

Executive Fellow, Tuck School of Business, CIO Roundtable

[email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]

@dhinchcliffe#workcoordination #lowcode

Smartsheet

“Battle Cry” for the technology leader today

Use technology to maximize value creation by the business via:•Automation•Productivity• Insight•Transformation

Today: Do It All YourselfTomorrow: Let the Network Do More of the Work

@dhinchcliffe#workexecution #lowcode

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:

What Are The Leading Digital Leaders are Focusing On Today


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Growth of Technology and Human Success: Hand in Hand

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Technology Growing and Change Fastest in History Which Overall Has Been Very Good for Us

Human Population over Time

Emerging Technology Rate of Change At All Time High


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Insight: Linear Thinking Does

Not Prepare us for Exponential Times

More Change in Life and Business in the Next Ten YearsThan the Last 40 Combined


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And Yet Most Organizations Are Well Behind the Digital Curve

More MIT Data on Digital Maturity: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/coming-of-age-digitally/

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/coming-of-age-digitally/


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The Transformation Journey That We Are All On…


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Successful Change Requires A New Way of Thinking and Working


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Why New Digital Mindset and Approaches Are Required


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1 2Insight: The Value of Digital is Driven by

Power Laws That Pay Off Big Downstream

But Most Organizations Only Change

Linearly, or Logarithmically at Best

The Payoff of Power Laws

(Like Moore’s Law) Over Time

Understanding Exponential Tech Change Actually Helps Us PrepareEnabling Us to Anticipate the Nearly Unlimited Value Potential

(cc) 2018 Constellation Research. | Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. | @dhinchcliffe

Three Core Insights for Digital Leaders To Pathfind the Way Forward

• Many experiments are necessary to pathfind the way

- The venture capital industry has built an empire on the 1 or 2 in 10 model

• It’s now cheaper to experiment than to analyze an opportunity

• “Just try it”

• Corollary: The best ideas come where you least expect

• Data operations now the lifeblood of strategic change and industry leadership

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try

try

try

try

try

try

try

try

try

win

(cc) 2018 Constellation Research | Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. | @dhinchcliffe 12


“The persistent digitization of Nordstrom’s business has allowed the

company to grow revenues by more than 50% in the last five years”

(cc) 2018 Constellation Research | Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. | @dhinchcliffe

And Why You Might Not Be Able To Without 3-5 Years Lead Time

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(cc) 2018 Constellation Research. | Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. | @dhinchcliffe

In Fact, Most of Your Digital Ideas Will Need to Pivot to Succeed. And It’s

Necessary.

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The digital winners must adapt in all new ways

All Organizations Are Being Impacted By Digital

• The current life span of a Fortune 500 company is 15 years + falling

• The challenges of adapting to today’s operating environment:

- Rapid and disruptive technology innovation

- Dramatic increase in expectations by customers and the marketplace

- Gap between digital high performers and laggards growing faster than ever before

- New business models blurring industry boundaries


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Organizations Will Need a New “Digital Metabolism”• That Can Change About as Fast as the World Does

• An Workers Will Have to Help Lead the Charge Together with the C-Suite


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What Must Workers and the C-Suite Realize Together for the Future?


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• Continuous Learning• Rapid Experimentation• Tolerance for “Eccentric Behavior”• Digital native thinking (power laws)• High EQ• Comfort with Uncertainty• Unwavering Support from Leadership• Be the Change You Want to See• Transdisciplinary• Data-driven <— Almost ready

What Are the Key Mindset Enablers of Digital Change?


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Key Insight: Moving from Push to Pull Based Models for Tech ChangeImplication: Digital Transformation Must Be More Broadly Workforce Empowering


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Source: MIT Digital Transformation Survey

It Takes Engaged

Leadership to

Overcome Key

Barriers to

Digital

Transformation.

That’s

Leadership from

Anywhere…


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Our Belief: Digital Change Is An Ongoing Journey So Structure It That Way

What Have We Learned About Large Scale Change?

• 77% of change initiatives fail…HBR

• Historically the adoption of emerging tech has left a wake of failed efforts…

- ERP, CRM, SOA, etc.

• Digital change programs that use traditional adoption approaches usually do not work

- Most strategic change programs are project-driven and in today’s faster world outdated before being fully implemented

- Traditional change programs are static, cascading one time events

- Traditional adoption processes are technology centric while digital adoption requires a human centric lens


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Which the Center of Excellence Model was Supposed to Fix

Centralized Change Has Been Breaking Down for A While


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“How many think your organization has a good model for digital change?”

SHOW OF HANDS PLEASE


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It Was Technology Challenges that Forced Us to Look New Models to Empower Workers


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Worker Empowerment: Proof Points

At the Largest Scale, Industry Has Learned that Open, and Collaborative Driven Approaches Are the Most Effective

• There has been revolution in how loosely-coupled but well aligned groups of people can drive change

• Open Source

• Agile, and now Devops

• Open Innovation and APIs

• Social Media

• Crowdfunding

• Disaster Relief

• Network Leadership

• Hackathons


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incremental change

IT

IT as support unit,

enabling centrally,

“Doing it all”

Limited external

competition/enablement

service providers

outsourcing firms

faster change

IT as support unit,

CoEs driving innovation

More external

competition

service providers

outsourcing firms

app stores

IT

Co

E

Co

E

cloud

fastest change

network of IT enablement,

broadly innovating decentrally

Most external

competition

service providers

outsourcing firms

app stores cloud

CoE = Center of Excellence | NoE = Network of Excellence | = Shadow IT

No

E

Co

ELo

B

Lo

B

Co

E

Lo

B

dev partners

dev

partners

APIs

Lesson: Organizations Must Organize for Frictionless Empowerment


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We Need a Model that Will Scale Up and Move as Fast as Digital Change

And Empower Workers at Scale with Digital Self-Help


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Top obstacles to digital change

The Majority of these Challenges are People Issues

Because Most Organizations Aren’t Becoming Digital Nearly Fast Enough

- Lack of skills to enable changeDon’t have time

- Disengagement (at all levels)

- Lack of curiosity in new ideas

- Insular management culture

- Unfamiliarity or dislike of technology

- Lack of empathy & caring

- Not-invented here

- Shareholder vs family driven

- Lack of humility

- Fear of looking clumsy

- Commitment, but only superficially

Source: Change Agents Worldwide (@chagww) & Dion Hinchcliffe


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So, a Few Years Ago I Began to Notice a New Pattern on Change Projects…

That Change Teams were Becoming Change Networks


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• Washington Post Company• AstraZeneca• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt• Etlisat• Travelex• Tesco

Proof Points of Communities of Change


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Digital

Workplace

Transformation Results

Changing Everyone Was Too Hard and Was Going to Fail Under Those Rules

There Was Another Missing Piece to the Change Puzzle: Workers


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• It’s always a people problem. - Gerald Weinberg

• Productivity of Digital Teams Varies from 1:10

• Existing Models that Focused on Changing 100% of Everything Themselves Were Doomed to Fail

• Fast Forward Past the Blockers to the Actors What if we could plan a self-growing seed of change?

The Key Insights Were With Us…


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We Have a Growing New Audience to Tap into Pent Up Desire for Progress and Improvement:

DigitalChangeAgents


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Digital Org Structures are the Natural Platform for Change Agents


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Community ManagersChange Agents Your Executive

Leadership

Your Business and

Technology Stakeholders

strategy

collaboration

& formulation

strategy

communication

Lessons

Learned

Online

Community

Platform

Latest

Digital Business

Concepts &

Techniques

Digital

Strategy

Decision

Maps

Detailed

Roadmaps

Digital

WorkplaceStrategy

Co-Creation

Enterprise

Change Plan

45-60 day cycles,

delivered using secure online platforms

Using Digital Enablement of Workers for Transformation of the Enterprise


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The Biggest Lesson of Digital Org Structures: Let The Network Do The Work....


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Rise of the Citizen Developer• Comfortable and conversant with new

technology

- But not usually a coder

• Has deep subject matter expertise in the business that can be tapped into for new apps

• Is familiar with several major SaaS platforms that are easy to customize to meet new needs

• Is willing to experiment and try new things

• Has typically worked closely and collaborated with the IT department in the past

• Is usually a team player willing to learn a few basic rules and guidelines to keep Citizen Development safe and controlled

Key Events

• Increased rate of new apps and

tech

• Growing backlogs in the

traditional IT department

• Rise of new Low Code platforms

• Governance push to move away

from Excel to run businesses

Why to Prioritize

• Solve more business problems

with local experience

• Faster application development

• Better fit to business needs

• Improved scale of digital

transformation


Smartsheet

(cc) Creative Commons, 2010-2019. Constellation Research, Inc. Some rights reserved.

The CIO/IT Audience

• Business Continuity• Service Delivery• Operations• Support• Security• Solution Development• Project Management• Innovation

Comparison of IT with Business Side


CIO Role Respective to Top 3 Reporting Relationships


What Does It Take to Reach IT?

• Directly address the core operational concerns:

Deployment, ops, security, support

• Technology with sustainable future potential

• Peers they can talk with

• Alignment with existing technology choices, stacks, and architecture

decisions

• Easy to manage and support

• Vendors and platforms that deliver on career potential

• No kool-aid/marketing; highly pragmatic messaging

• Use the language of IT -> “service delivery”, “backlogs”


What the Top IT Executive

Considers for Digital Solutions

• Solution maturity

• Technology stack

• Architectural fit

• Ease-of-deployment

• Ability to integrate

• Training & ramp-up

• Manageability

• Security and compliance

capabilities

Solution Considerations Vendor Considerations Other Considerations

• Support (geos, languages, etc.)

• Reputation

• Critical defect resolution

time

• Vendor manageability

• Executive relationship

• Analytics/reporting

• CMO alignment

• Data accessibility and

ownership

• Technical debt

• Disaster recovery

• Cloud strategy


What the Top Corporate Executive

Considers for Digital Solutions

• Alignment with brand, corporate vision, and mission

• Ability to support immediate and longer-term corporate priorities

• Ability to produce growth and customer acquisition/retention

• Having the right strategic partner

• Alignment with the rest of the C-Suite

• Shared aspirations

Primary Considerations

Note: Many of these are also the CMO’s goals/needs at the org level


Smartsheet

The Ultimate Sustainable Digital Workplace Tech is a Platform for Change


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Aligning Workers with the C-Suite

• We have incredibly powerful assets our workers, customers, and partners

• If we have vision, we can use them for very ambitious continuous change efforts that scale far better

• That must go well beyond simple change projects and become more like regular operations

• Change agents are giving leaders a model to influence, orchestrate, and guide organizations at a mass scale level

• We need to build new change skills and network leadership through communities of transformation

• Change agents and community managers are the future of sustainable change

• Use digital platforms to realize the change

• Use the above to proactively enable human potential to its fullest

connecting the workforce to the priorities of the c …...executive fellow, tuck school of business,...

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