CONSULTING SERVICES
EDUCATE . ENVISION . ENACT . ESTABLISH
“Everyone has a strategy until you’re punched in the face!”
These words were famously spoken by Mike Tyson after being beaten for the first time in 1986. Against a background of digital disruption and the profound change that follows, we believe this statement is equally applicable in today’s business world.
EDUCATE . ENVISION . ENACT . ESTABLISH
The notion of long term business stability has become a myth. The new ‘business as usual’ for the leadership team is now anchored to instability, self-disruption, constantly changing customer expectations and a cavernous gap in workforce needs.
Our goal at Digital Nexus Associates is to make the often daunting specter of business transformation real and realizable, avoiding that potentially catastrophic ‘punch to the face’. Our engagement approach is designed to help us guide you to the next wave of business growth.
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We endeavor to do this through the delivery of four integrated service offerings:
Educate
Get Digitally Fit
Improve and sharpen levels of digital literacy. Build consensus for change at the board level.
Envision
Design Your Future
Scan the horizon, shape transformation imperatives. Develop an actionable vision to drive growth in a digital world.
Enact
Place Your Bets
Develop a winning business strategy. Comprehend technology acquisition, partnerships, workforce, investment priorities and key 'make or buy' decisions.
Establish
Make it Happen
Institute a digital mindset and culture of agility. Ensure a single source of the truth keeps the organization in lock-step through formation of a Transformation Office.
DIGITAL LITERACY
When embarking on a journey of change it’s crucial for leaders to have a clear working knowledge of what’s really transforming the world, and its implications. This goes beyond understanding the immediate competitive threat and prevailing trends in a given industry. A broader contextual perspective is needed since the disruption facing organizations is just as likely to come from outside their sector as within it. The leadership team needs to bring into sharp focus the major factors creating disruption and opportunity to collectively chart a path forward. Our focus on building executive digital acumen is intended to provide the combined insights required to ensure everyone is ‘up to speed’.
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The material we have developed is designed to be a little provocative, delivered in what we hope is a thought provoking and insightful manner. It’s intended to create both a heightened knowledge of the factors and variables impacting business, whilst generating an increased sense of urgency to act.
CONCENSUS
Successful transformation of any kind must start off on the right foot. This begins by ensuring there is consensus across the leadership team – something that doesn’t happen as frequently as might be expected. The leadership team need to be of one voice on why change is needed, what it looks like and how employees, customers and partners are part of the journey.
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With the narrative and learnings from the Digital Literacy stage as a backdrop, we facilitate an open strategic discussion with leaders on what change means – individually, for business units, and collectively across the organization. The subsequent dialogue often paints a picture of variation, allowing the identification of gaps and issues that need resolving to reach a state of consensus. This should ensure a common voice outcome vs many variations on a theme.
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Without consensus both urgency and desire is diminished, ultimately constraining the organizations ability to move forward.
HORIZON
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Envisioning an organizations future starts with an understanding of what’s on the horizon. A market assessment is undertaken, within the context of the organization, to identify the potentially relevant ‘mega trends’ and disruptive forces in play. This is inclusive of digital, industrial, societal and socio-economic shifts.
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Having applied a significance filter to highlight those most applicable, we work with staff members sequestered into a ‘sensor network’ to guide a deeper dive impact analysis.
Through a disposition and recommend process, a set of key strategic focus areas emerge. These focus areas are used to shape a clear set of business imperatives and guard rails that will ultimately guide development of the organizations digital business vision.
VISION
With key strategic focus areas identified, and imperatives and guardrails providing a directional foundation, ideation and innovation can begin. We guide workgroups, following an iterative, agile and coordinated approach, to craft and test alternatives. It’s critical that during this process the end customer remains centre stage as value propositions are refined.
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Through socialising and evaluation forums, such as Innovation Days, the leadership team is able to poke, prod, debate and refine as the leading candidate ideas are brought to the fore. Leading concepts are further built out and assumptions, expectations, goals and scenario models documented to form an actionable vision, supported by a strong business case.
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With an actionable vision is settled upon, it is recommended a communication plan is put into action. This will help ensure the organizations most valuable asset, the employees, are kept informed, enrolled and motived.
ESTABLISH
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For a transformation to successfully meet its strategic business objectives, and fulfil projected potential, it’s essential that a digital mindset, increased metabolic rate and appropriate governance structure is established. This will help ensure the organization operates with greater agility and velocity than before.
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This entails creation of a new, or the additional empowerment of an existing, Strategy/Transformation Office and formalization of the role of the Chief Digital Officer. This shouldn’t be a large organization, nor is it necessarily intended to be in place for decades – only until a new operating norm has been absorbed into the organizations DNA.
TRANSFORMATION OFFICE SETUP
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Guidance is provided on the Transformation Office charter, and we work with you to tune one that’s right for your organization. Of significant importance is ensuring the right level of empowerment is granted, backed up with support at the board level. Staffing and creating the correct balance of skills within the team is also included.
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TRANSFORMATION FUNCTION
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We shine a spotlight on the two sides of the role, which broadly speaking are Digital Leadership Culture and Transformation Operations (but not a PMO). This will build clarity and discipline not only focused on getting things done in an effective and unified way, but in a manner that embodies a digital culture and will vastly improve the 'digital fitness' levels the organization needs for the future.
STRATEGY
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The role of strategy is to build a bridge connecting the organizations vision to an action plan needed to operationalize it. It describes a set of positions and approaches deemed necessary to meet the long term business objectives. Many organizations separate business strategy from digital strategy, however, we believe that technology has become so deeply integrated with business that a blended ‘business strategy for a digital world’ approach is a more pragmatic and successful formula. It also helps prevent the formation of ‘digital ghettos’, where technological experimentation divorced from business objectives is all too common.
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The ‘business strategy for a digital world’ is one of two intertwined strategic threads we provide guidance on, the second being the workforce strategy. The former comprehends the 'what (it is)', 'why (we’re doing it)' and 'how (to do it)'. The latter puts a lens on the 'how' but from the perspective of enabling a workforce with the work style, skills and incentives necessary to perform with the agility and pace expected in digital business.
TRANSFORM
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On its own, strategy does little to move the organization forward, it needs to be operationalized. Doing this requires an architecture. Our guidance leverages key concepts from TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), taking a holistic and tiered view to formulate an Enterprise Architecture with emphasis on web services/re-use and extensibility via an API/Service Oriented led method. We also use tools such as Gartner’s’ PACE layer model to optimize IT systems investments and determine where pubic cloud, differentiated home grown applications and Devops agile development approaches make most sense.
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RESOURCE
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As an organization moves from strategy into execution the work needs to be funded and the output measurable. It’s therefore critical to understand cost structures, affordability and spending constraints. Difficult decisions of when to buy vs build and invest vs disinvest trade-offs come into play. This stage builds out the resource plan from both the partner/supplier and financial perspectives.