How to get **** done with empathy, tackle sacred cows, crack the digital fitness whip and still get cards on the holidays. Sound like fun? Keep reading …
In any journey of change and transformation there are a dizzying array of elements to consider as you shape the future of the business – from purpose to people, vision to validation, disruption to differentiation, culture to competition, people to partnerships, risk to reward and so on.
Managed effectively your organization will shift from the VUCA world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity to one of Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility. Sounds brilliant doesn’t it, or to paraphrase Jerry Maguire 'You had me at hello, where do I sign?'.
At Digital Nexus Associates we capture these variables into 4 stages:
Educate (digital literacy and consensus),
Envision (determine what your future looks like),
Enact (strategies to get you there) and
Establish (formation of the Transformation Office (TO) and the role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO)).
That last stage is todays topic for discussion.
Let us submit that if you’re a larger, established organization, in either the public or private sector, and you're going through some major transformation, you do need a CDO and a Transformation Office (TO). Otherwise, you run the risk of entering the overpopulated crowd of organizations who had great strategy but poor execution - the end, RIP, hello Blockbuster!
But what is the TO, and what does the CDO actually do?
At face value it might sound like a glorified PMO – cracking a whip at weekly meetings to ensure stages of a plan are met, and a team of spreadsheet junkies doing pivot tables in their sleep (people who may never have met a customer in their lives). Not so. A wide scale transformation clearly requires discipline and ensuring that 'things' get done, but it’s much more than that – let's elaborate.
The CDO is the face most often associated with transformation at the company. He or she needs to act as coach, and guide, to the CEO and the leadership team. They lead the change the company is embarking on, and while they are there to ESTABLISH a new beat rate for the organization as its transformation train leaves the station, they are also central and pivotal to the other 3 phases mentioned above (EDUCATE, ENVISION, ENACT). They are good problem solvers and business leaders, exhibit outstanding customer orientation, have a high degree of empathy, can be challenging and inspirational at the same time, and have excellent interpersonal skills. They are also determined to work themselves out of a job as fast, but as effectively, as they can – seriously!
Organizationally the CDO needs to be anchored to the CEO, but what often happens is they're granted all the responsibility but with limited control, thus their ability to get 'stuff done' becomes a function of their soft skills and powers of persuasion. That’s a strategy that we’ve seen a lot, and it goes nowhere fast. The default position should be to have the CDO report directly in to the CEO – period. If that’s not the case we’d be curious as to why not, and if the answer doesn’t pass the red face test it's time to question what role you think the CDO is actually doing (hint: it’s not to act as a sounding board for the CIO).
The CDO is a change agent. They can’t drive change without teeth, so they need the backing of the CEO and the board. The role isn’t a popularity contest either. They are likely to face resistance – often from other members of the leadership team who may be less predisposed to change. So, the CDO will often need to respectfully, and thoughtfully, pick the right fights to ensure the “scared cows” that exist in every organization are addressed in a grown up, transparent, manner - because if they’re not, they’ll hold you back (hence the skillset mentioned earlier).
As for the team the CDO needs – it’s not a big team. It’s not made up of roles/titles/egos, it’s made up of skills. You’re looking to recruit talented, passionate, empathetic, pragmatic staff that have a genuine desire to institutionalize change across the organization (and manage the accompanying challenges along the way).
The roles the team subsequently play across the organization can be split into two sides of the same coin – 'getting stuff done', influenced by changing the way in which it gets done – the proverbial balancing act of 'carrot and stick', but with the empathy to which we eluded earlier.
The empathy part is crucial. At Digital Nexus Associates we call it developing a Digital Leadership Culture. Another way to think about it is improving the organizations digital fitness level. We’re operating in a world of constant, and accelerating, change - and it's not going to slow down. As such, the metabolic rate the organization operates at needs to change in concert - and we don’t just mean the leadership team. Every employee has a responsibility to improve their digital fitness level – it drives motivation, innovation, productivity, cross team collaboration, transparency, decision making, risk taking, discipline ….. Clearly this doesn’t happen overnight, but part of the role of the CDO is to lead the effort as the organizations “digital fitness” drill sergeant. They must inspire and build that culture and mindset across the corporation using the tools at their disposal.
Moving forward on this will also clearly improve the operational aspects of the TO function, such as the disciplined program management of key initiatives (along with coaching and encouragement for the initiative owners as needed), governance, investment models, decision making, consistency of metrics to ensure a single source of the truth, communication, recognition and rewards, data gathering and analysis, and so on. It’s also fair to mention that in terms of TO meetings they should not be run as the usual 'show up, throw up, flip slides, exit stage left' gatherings you’ve likely witnessed all to often. These meetings are about getting things done to move the company forward. They are data driven, fact based, often devoid of emotion, and identify and resolve potential issues so that the desired outcomes are reached in support of the strategies in play.
Both the CDO and the members of the TO team are all arbiters of change. It’s in their make-up. They role model the behavior they're trying to institutionalize because they believe in it. They strive to create a new 'business as usual' for the organization – one that’s based on constancy of change, necessity of innovation, and one where EVERY employee is part of the solution.
If you are fortunate enough to lead (or be part of) one of these teams, we think you’ll find it one of the most enlightening, challenging, but ultimately rewarding roles you ever undertake.
Finally, we mentioned earlier that the CDO should end up working themselves out of a job, and you may have scratched your head and wondered why? It’s not a 'job for life'. These don’t exist in todays day and age. The job is about guiding the company to a new norm, a new beat rate, a new operating DNA, that moves the business onwards and upwards. As this starts to become more pervasive it signals the time to wrap-up one chapter and begin the next (the expertise is in high demand elsewhere)!
There’s clearly a lot more to discuss in and around this subject. I’d love to hear your opinions, host your questions, and understand if there are other pieces of this puzzle you’d like me to elucidate on in upcoming blogs.
Andrew and Jim
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