EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation

When thinking about the technology talent and capabilities needed for your transformation, try a capability building mindset rather than emphasizing termination.

A digital transformation demands two key ingredients—articulated principles and trust in leaders.

Having an LVT aligned around outcomes and an organization aligned around functions is a misalignment of people to desired outcomes.

As George Westerman, principal research scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy, says, “When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”

Adaptive leaders have to overcome this negative connotation associated with not knowing, by expressing it in another way: “I know our vision. I know we will experiment with how to get there and eventually succeed.” Adaptive leaders help teams build confidence in their process and ability to solve difficult problems.

Governance teams need to navigate a paradox—ensuring adequate compliance to fiduciary, regulatory, and risk management needs while also moderating the burdensome overhead of traditional governance processes. When teams are asked to be flexible, adaptive, and agile, governance processes need to mirror those goals. This means changing the measurement

The most profound of these is the change in focus from internal return on investment (ROI) to external customer value, which is fundamentally a change in perspective and your gut-level basis of decision making.

Organizations are caught in a dilemma years in the making: Redeveloping the systems is too time consuming and risky, but building new digital assets depends on upgrades to these systems. Finding solutions to this dilemma—finding creative ways to revitalize these legacy systems by wrapping, selective revisions, and automated testing—becomes a critic

As some organizations move to more autonomous teams and agile practices, the link can be lost between executives’ desired customer value and the delivery of the work. The autonomous team relies heavily on the role of product as the “glue” that brings diverse perspectives together and aligns them with the portfolio team and customer expectations.