#OrganisationDevelopment Archives

Vectors for digital transformation

“Why are Digital Transformation projects tough?”, he asked me. We were just starting a conversation why the vectors for digital transformation were simple to see yet not commonly practiced. This was a CEO of a large enterprise who has been at his wit’s end, trying to evangelise digital change. The conversation meandered and the two vectors that stayed on the table are outlined here.

A growing number of leaders understand the importance of digital and the impending changes that knock on our gates. At one level, that is good news. The other piece of good news is the surfeit of new technology that docks at our ports every minute. They call it the fourth industrial revolution and thats not without reason. Technology at that scale accompanied by executive backing should be a sufficient multiplier you would reckon. True, it implies raw power. But digital transformation is more nuanced than that.

Digital Transformation is tough.

Despite all the promise it holds, any transformation is tough. Particularly so for digital transformation. For starters, Digital transformation cannot be achieved through diktats. There are no silver bullets, gilded warriors and ornamented events.

There are many other reasons why digital transformation is tough. These range from having a common understanding of what digital is to evolving a strategy for getting the organisation ready to leverage it in full. The digital space is dynamic, with both actual change and a lot of noise leaving people confused and leaden-footed. This is often exacerbated by leaders seeking lasting change at a furious pace. Like any other initiative!

The only trouble is that going digital is not an initiative. On the contrary, it is patient work at organisation social design and reimagining of the work that is important.

The difficult part about the change does not pertain to technology but about conversations about work. To fundamentally reimagine a set way of working with all stakeholders concerned, is not a function of technology alone. Therefore, it requires an inviting way for people to examine their new context owing to shifts heralded by technology. Processes go redundant. Policies will require a relook. Skills are different. Etc etc. These warrant careful examination via conversation. Human and work-centric facilitated conversations make a difference.

Change management with digital is a messy dialogue. It needs patience and a series of sustained activities. Two vectors for digital transformation are outlined here.

a. Portfolio of initiatives:

Any transformation project doesn’t get accomplished with one swish of a sword. It needs multi-pronged initiatives over a period of time. Work and accomplishment of work tasks being at the center, a multidimensional patient effort is a bare minimum. Communication, org design, workflow, processes and policies, skills enhancement and several others. All targeted at a few work-related outcomes that can flourish through conversation, ideation and perhaps experimentation. Teams that are willing to invest the time in conversation and evolve new ways of working have far more chance at engineer lasting change.

b. The necessity of the big moves and the small wins:

Digital transformation success stories have often an adroit balance between ‘big moves’ and ‘small wins’. The big moves provide stability and the foundations. Investments of money and time, infrastructure, commitment, and communication etc are all examples of the big moves. Small wins are like speedometers on the journey. They show that there is progress in the direction of the Big Moves.

Several leaders recognise the importance of these and bring about a play in both. A celebration of the Small Wins in the context of the Big Move brings clarity to a wider population about what is what. Not to mention, a clear understanding of the need to keep going forward.

To be able to hold the space for all stakeholders to come together to reimagine their roles, skills, and ways of working, in the wake of digital, is a key skill for modern day change makers. We must remember that the days of ‘herding into a room for a powerpoint based announcement’ are long over.

All this is for ones that are serious about orchestrating a mindset that embraces digital transformation. The essence to lasting Digital Transformation is getting ready to change again, just after you have changed! It is a continuing conversation with no finish line in place. That makes it perpetual.

Building a Story Ecosystem

Post By Stephen Berkeley

In 2011 I had the fortune of spending three days with Peter Senge, the Author of “The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation” and “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies for Building a Learning Organization” identified in 1997 by the Harvard Business Review as one of the seminal management books of the previous 75 years. The event was the Society of Organisation Learning‘s “Fundamentals of Leadership” workshop in Boston. It brought alive for me the importance of active listening in the building a story ecosystem.

Peter has a very Zen style, so when he spoke his words seemed to go deeper into the cerebral cortex than any speaker I have ever heard. One of his pearls that has shaped my work as an Organsiation Development Practitioner was “What we say and don’t say and what we do and don’t do creates culture”. From my experience of working at a leadership level in healthcare over the last thirty years in Australia, UK and India, I would rephrase this to, “what we say and don’t say, what we do and don’t do, creates stories, in our minds and the minds of others, and it is these stories that create culture”. And of course, as Peter Drucker famously said: “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

One of the hypotheses we are testing with the “Building Bridges and Breaking Walls, One Story at a time” workshops is that “When whole systems engage in deep listening to each other new realities emerge for the whole system that can be infectious. Systemic change will bring about lasting impact for the system and its constituents”. The exact opposite is also true, when we do not engage in deep listening to each other, new realities will still emerge and can be infectious for all the wrong reasons, because the untold stories live on in our behaviours. The grapevine is stories that have not been listened to. So it can also be said that untold stories can have a “lasting impact on the system and its constituents”.

In healthcare, a reputation that has taken years to be built can be destroyed in a flash, whether it be an individual or an entire organisation, because lives are at stake. However, a system does not break down overnight. There generally is a steady stream of stories that would have been symptoms that the system is about to implode. But as leaders, we are often caught up in getting things done that we do not pay attention to the emerging stories within our organisations. Stories not tended to, have the capability of derailing everything from our overall vision to a new product launch, to a project or just everyday productivity. Not to mention destroying relationships. Stories like stones can be used to build a bridge or a wall. How we tend to stories determines whether we build a bridge or a wall.

I took the above picture at Haines Falls in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York shortly before my workshop with Peter Senge in Boston. I had just finished co-facilitating a 4 day Dialogue with 60 healthcare leaders from 7 countries who gathered to explore the intersection of spirituality with healthcare. It was a vibrant but intense experience as I was the graphic recorder, my first attempt. But I needed a bit of a release so I decided to go for a walk in the woods and discovered this epic bridge.

After four days of listening to stories and synthesising them into a graphic, this bridge represented our journey. We started the four-day dialogue with our own individual stories, but through a well crafted facilitative process involving Open Space Technology, World Cafe and Appreciative Inquiry we identified our commonality and the areas we could individually provide more leadership on. Each story was like a stone, we could have used them to build a bridge or a wall. We chose the bridge.

Trust plays a central role. To draw out the stories that are shaping your culture needs a facilitator skilled in creating a safe environment for conversations that count. Currently, there is a trend towards “storytelling”, but it is only part of the picture. There is, in fact, a Story Ecosystem. We need to pay equal attention to the component parts of this story ecosystem. The art of story work requires you to be a story detective, a three-dimensional listener, a harvester, a curator, a synthesiser, a sense-maker and a facilitator. You need a systematic way of hearing all the perspectives and understanding the narratives.

Our workshops on “Building Bridges and Breaking Walls, One Story at a Time” and the online conversation we hope to create, will dive deep into the StoryWork Ecosystem. Do hope you can join us at #IAFAsia17 in Seoul on the 18th August. You can also follow our journey on our FB page