- 3 mins
Most organizations approach transformation the same way they would approach drawing a tree. When you ask someone to draw a tree they will almost always draw a trunk with a leafy mass on top representing the leaves. People never draw the roots of a tree. The roots are the most important part of a tree. They provide nourishment to the tree, are key in helping it grow, and keep the tree stable when the wind blows. The question is if the roots are so important to a tree, why do people never draw them? Because they do not see them.
Customers also only focus on what they can see when embarking on their digital transformations. What they can see are the tangible elements of an operating model including:
- New Strategies (ie: ven diagrams, charter statements, SWAT analyses, magic quadrants, etc.)
- New Structures (ie: org charts, roles & responsibilities, RACIs, etc.)
- New Processes (ie: Agile development, DevOps, approval processes, flow diagrams, etc.)
- New Systems (ie: Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, etc.)
Although these are critical in the operating model, there are elements that are unseen that could prove to be even more important. The roots of the tree represent the intangible, human elements of operating models or the culture including:
- The unwritten rules about how work gets done
- The values individuals hold dear about why they work at the organization
- The assumptions about what it means to be successful in the organization
- The behaviors that people enact daily
Often times we will be sitting in meetings with executive teams and we will ask who is responsible for their strategy, system, and process. They will quickly point out the leaders of technology, architecture or operations. When we ask who is responsible for making sure that the behaviors and culture align with the digital strategy, the executives look around the room, shrug their shoulders, and cannot provide an answer.
Organizations must focus both above ground and below ground to be successful in their transformations to new operating models. There are three main trends that we have see in successful organizations. These trends are not the only trends we have found in our research. They are, however, the keystone trends - meaning that if you start with these, other processes and behaviors fall into place.