Organization-led implementation, part 1

- Welcome to ITPROTV. I'm your host coming (mumbles) - Live from San Francisco. (mumbles) (gentle music) - [Narrator] You're watching ITProTV. - Hello everyone. Welcome back to another exciting edition of ITProTV. I'm your host Vonne Smith, and this is our various and professional series. And in this episode we're going to talk about organization-led implementation. And here to help us is Miss Jo Peacock. How are you today? - Absolutely fantastic. Thank you, Vonne. How are you? - I'm excited to be back. I, well, back, we had a weekend- - We did. - In between our last episode. - We did, yeah. - Yeah. So I had to go back in the, the vault and look at our last episode to remind myself what we were talking about, so- - Well, you know what? I don't think that you are the only person that might have to go back and remember what we were talking about, 'cause I want to refresh your mind. We have this. Yeah. The different transformation methods, different approaches. We had the operational, we had customer focus and we had the future focus. So operational was looking at a sort of optimization. It was digitization of processes. Then we had the customer focus in there, which was about understanding the needs of the customer. And then we also had future focus as well. And so. - And we had the, there was a, an error along the bottom. - There was actually, you've caught me out. - I know, 'cause I helped her with this presentation. I'm like, wait, no, that's a little bit further down in the presentation. - It is. Yeah. - Yeah. - I know but I didn't want to go so far back. See, so you caught me off- - Cause it's like from low to high. - This is the one you are talking about. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Same information. It's exactly the same information, which why I just went for the one that was most convenient and it's like that, to be honest with you. But yes, this one's probably looking a little bit clearer because the other one, you're right, it did have some sort of background images in there or some background shading in there. But yes, this one showed the level of difficulty. The level of difficulty being low from an operational perspective and right the way through to high from a future perspective. So again, you can actually outweigh the pros and cons just by understanding the level of difficulty and understanding what it is you're trying to achieve. You know, from a an optimization perspective, you are improving what you already do. There's an assumption there and there has to be an assumption there that you already know what you do. So you, what you want to do though is improve on that. So we would use lean methodologies. We look at minimizing waste in our current practices in order to be able to achieve optimization. But then from a transformation perspective, we've got customer focused and we've got future focused. And if you remember, customer transformation or customer focus is focused on the needs of the customer right now. So we are still transforming, we're still doing something different. We're still looking to modify our behavior as an organization and we're still looking to modify our outcomes as an organization, but it's based on what the customer needs now or maybe even what the customer needs, well, what they think they need in the future. Whereas future focus, well that's something different. And there is a word that I always use when it comes to future focus, and that's the word disruption. What we are looking to do is we're looking to disrupt the marketplace. So if I were to, and I'm just going to throw this one out there and, and I'm, there's no right or wrong answer to this one. So this is just a kind of a, a talking point really. What is the difference between, do you think that the customer future needs or what the customer perceives of their future needs and disrupting the marketplace. - Disruption would be totally different and you don't even know you need it. - Right. - Like you don't even know you want it. - Yeah, like I said, there's no right or wrong answer here. This is more about a discussion and this is really about, you know, trying to, to clarify this for you. Customer needs and customer future needs are, are very much, what's the word I'm looking for? Incremental changes. That's what they're looking for. If I were a customer, I would think that, you know, I need the upgrade to that cell phone. I need the new, the latest cell phone. I want to have the latest app on my cell phone. I want to have maybe, you know, facial recognition I think is one that you've got on your cell phone, isn't it? But, so I want to have that facial recognition, whereas disruption, the disruptor is the person that comes out with a completely new idea that the customer hadn't even thought of before. Remember when I said in a previous episode that I, you know, Apple made this announcement about this wearable technology, about the watch, and all of a sudden I had this watch shape toll in my life. By the end of that particular keynote speech, I discovered I had this watch shape toll in my life. And, and I did. And I never even knew I had a watch shaped on in my life (laughing)until I'd watched that keynote speech. That's disruption. Whereas the, the customer focus, the customer future focus is focused on innovation but not necessarily disruption. Now you said that you'd got, did you say you had the series three watch? - Yeah. - Right. I am still old and boring. I still have- - You have the original one? - I do, I have series one watch. - Yeah - Yeah, yeah. And I see no need to change it because to me there hasn't been enough innovation, there's not been enough sort of disruption now for me to change 'cause there's nothing too different about, so apart from a, a bit of waterproofing, I think, and, and that's it really. - Yeah and I can make phone calls from my watch. Yeah, I have like actual cellular service on my watch. - Do you have a sim card in that? - No, no, just- - But I make, I make phone calls from this as well. - Do you, can you talk into yours? Yeah. - Okay. I didn't know that was a series three. I thought that was a series three bonus. - No, I don't know. - I don't either. - But I, you know, what I do know is, I think it's probably, as they, again, as they incrementally change and incrementally improve their, you know, their current offering. I think they just offer, you know, different functionality on it. But yeah, I mean I have phone calls and I can make and receive phone calls on this. - On just WiFi? - I don't know. Yes, I think, I think WiFi. Yes. - But I have like actual cellular service. Right. I think, I think that's a seriously one. - I don't know. I've not used it. I'll be honest with you. I don't. - It's pretty cool though. I do like it and then I don't, I don't bring my phone merely as much when I go out on walks or whatever because everything I need is on my watch. - You see, it really is down to customer need. But what I haven't noticed is anything sort of disruptive, anything that's made me say I, I desperately want that. - And that, that is something since I go out running outside frequently and having to put my arm band on and everything like that, that was like a huge thing for me is like, I still have cellular service. I don't have to bring my phone anymore. So that way if I, if I have to make a phone call, it's really more for like safety reasons, like emergencies and things like that but. - I know it's just make- - It does make me feel better - If you fall over and break your leg. Then they can track you, can't they? 'cause they've got the signal from your watch. - And I can make a phone call. Yeah. So I mean, but it, that is something that was enough. Like that was important to me but then it was ones like, "Did I really, did I ever think that I would need that?" I'm like, "You have your cell phone, why would you ever want to call from your watch?" So I think it kind of illustrates the point of like, I didn't even know I needed that. - Yeah. - Or wanted it really and that's like, "Oh, oh well yeah, no, I, I want the wash with the cellular service." But - 'Cause I need that. - And that's about that disruption. That's, that's really what disruption is about. So, if we were analyzing the pros and cons, that's where our focus has got to be. The pros and cons have got to have focus on, you know, on, on what works for the business and what works for the organization as a whole rather than just for one particular department. Remember what I said, I think it was in a, it was in a previous episode, right at the very, very beginning. We don't actually innovate what we want to innovate. It has to be what the organization needs. It has to be based on what the organization is driving. It's not about what we want to do because invariably within IT we want to play with nice shiny toys. It's not about that. It is about delivering value to the organization, ensuring that the organization can help its customers achieve value as well. So we looked at operational and customer focus and future focus too. And then what we really had was we had the consequences of missing capabilities. You know, if we chopped out customer centricity, if we chopped out the customer focus, then we'd have products that we just created ourselves. If we took out sort of operational excellence, then we'd have pure, we'd have poor quality products. If we took out a focus on strategy, if we chopped that out, then we'd not be looking to the future. And if we missed leadership and if we missed governance, then we would have failed transformations. We'd have lack of transparency and we'd have lack of accountability as well. So what we looked at right at the very end of our last particular episode was this. We looked at implementing organizational or digital transformation and there was three different approaches that were organization-led and they were consultant-led and there was a mixed approach. So organization-led is what we're going to be looking at right now. In this particular episode. And organization-led is really about, well let's go to this one here. Defining our digital transformation capabilities. In other words, what can we do? And then developing a roadmap to actually achieve that transformation. So the first thing that we've got to do is define what the transformation and the digital capabilities are supposed to lay out. What do they need to achieve? Then we can assess what we have right now and we identify use cases and that will tell us, well what big gap we have got to identify and therefore fulfill in order to be able to achieve digital transformation. There's one thing that I don't want you to forget about though. And remember organizational change management that I talked about in a previous episode. Remember, according to those eight step, there has to be a need for this, otherwise this is not going to work at all within your organization. You looked as though you were about to say something there Vonne. - I was just kind of remembering some of the different examples that we've gone through. Would this be one with the, the bank that has the checks? Would this be they want to develop the way that you could take a picture with your phone to deposit the check? Would that be - This is not about a type of digital transformation. - Okay. - Okay. So the types were what we were looking at just now. So we were looking at sort of the optimization, we were looking at customer focus and we were looking at future focus. And so the optimization would be where we would be taking a, you know, taking a picture of a check for instance. Whereas that complete transformation future focus would be looking at sort of tap to pay and, and you know, complete innovation. What we're actually looking at now is how we do it. - Okay. - That's what, whatever decision we make, whatever we want to do, whether we want to optimize or whether we want to transform, however we do it, how do we do it? - So would this be like we're no longer going to do checks at all and we're going to. - No, this has got no that, that is part of the decision that we talked about in the previous episode. - Okay. - So in the previous episode when I, I take a look, let me go back to this particular, when I take a look at this particular slide. This tells me what it is we need to do. This is the what, right? This, I go to here. So this particular slide here, there's three approaches tells me how, how are we going to get there. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to define my end point. It's not necessarily an end point I have to say because it will be a transition and you know, we will always be looking to continually improve on that end point. But this, this actually defines what it is we want to achieve. This is what we're aiming for. So whether we're aiming for just scanning in checks or taking a photo of checks, which would be in that, in that orange column, or whether we are aiming for sort of tap to pay or the abolishment of checks. If we were abolishing checks, then that would be a customer focus. If we were looking for tap to pay, then that's going to be a future focus. It's something completely different. - Okay. Yeah. That, that makes, I was just making sure I had like an example that I could kind of - Yeah. - Put this into. - So, this is the, what we're trying to achieve here on this particular slide. And then what we've got right to the very, very end is we start on now is the how we going to get there. - Okay, so that would be - How are we going to do it? - Looking at how other organizations might have adopted this without the case studies and what machinery or what type of, and even just like hardware, but how we're going to have to change how we even - Yeah. - Process. And bear in mind when it comes to that future focus, there's probably aren't any organizations that have done it before. Because we want to be market leaders. The future focus means that we are the disruptors. So there probably isn't any organizations that have done this before and if that's the case, then an organization-led implementation. In other words, an implementation where we are doing it ourselves is probably not the best idea. However, if we bring in somebody from the outside, if we bring in a consultant, then oh, what do we do? We bring in industry experts, but then they might leak information out to our competitors. Yeah. You see this is a bit of a balancing act here. The right decision on those three is really a bit of a balancing act. So we've got to take into consideration what we're trying to achieve before we can then decide how we're going to get there. - That's so funny. Were were you like, like ea dropping on my conversations this weekend? - Oh(laughing) no. - Because my husband and I were talking about this idea. - We're talking about this idea and like, "Oh, that sounds like that actually might have legs." He's like, "Don't tell anybody. Don't say anything to anybody because if you ask for consultation then somebody could take that and and do it themselves." So that's why I'm just like, "Wait, were you, were you on the porch this weekend? Were you hiding the bushes listening to us?" (laughs) - And that's exactly, you know, that's exactly the dilemma that everybody has. That slide that we had where we just listed those three different options that organization-led or consultant-led or a mixed. Yeah, it's a huge big dilemma. I will be perfectly honest that when it comes to, and we will, over the next few episodes, we're going to explore sort of, which is better for, for each particular, you know, achievement for each particular focus. But for a lot of organizations that are looking to disrupt a mixed implementation is probably going to be the best because you need to have that industry experience. But you also need to be aware of the, you know, what was it you were saying about the secrecy aspect of it? - Yeah. - You know? - Yeah. - Yeah, don't tell anyone. - Make sure you get some NDAs on this on stuff. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean even NDAs or non-disclosure agreements, which are quite sort of prevalent here in the US even NDAs will not cover you for absolutely everything because of course an NDA, I think certainly with US law, isn't it the case that even if you signed an NDA, if that company that you're working for is actually doing something illegal, we've got whistleblower act or something that say that actually you can still report them and not actually contravene the NDA or something like, yeah. - Sounds like that, yeah, I'm not, I'm, I'm not up on that side. - Yeah, but I don't understand all of the legal requirements that are involved in that. You've got to understand that though. If you are doing something that is going to disrupt and something that your competitors are really, really going to want to get hold of, then you have to work out what's going to be best for you. - And that goes along with that diagram. Like you have to plan this out and like right case studies of where technology was stolen or other ideas of when that might have happened and to plan accordingly. - Yeah. - For it. So it's all part of that planning as an organization to. - So what you've got, what you've got on this particular diagram here is that we were looking at the organization-led implementation and the organization-led implementation is internal. This is where we keep it internal. This works absolutely fantastic for optimization projects and it also can work for customer focus projects as well. I'm not saying that it's not going to work for the future focus projects for the innovation, but like you say, it can be difficult and this is why you want to identify your use cases. You want to find out, you know exactly what's happened to your competitors. Have they tried this? Learn from their mistakes for instance, and then develop your roadmap for the future for how we're going to get there. Is this something that you need to remember for your test? Yes it is. You will need to remember these particular steps and we're going to go down these steps now and we're just going to, to take a look at what's involved in each step. But remember this is internal. There's no consultant involved, there's no one from the outside that's being brought into this. This is purely internal. Before we go any further though, and we will probably go into a part two on this, I'll, I'll warn you now, but before we go any further, I want us to think about the pros and cons of using internal people versus external people. Because we've already talked about one and that is the secrecy side of things. But then there's a flip side to that. In that okay, they may, an external person may be prone to or maybe tempted to go out to the marketplace and tell, you know, tell everybody what's going on here and what you are, what you are trying to achieve. But the other thing is that an external consultant will also have all of the insider gossip on what your competitors are trying to achieve as well. Because if they know what you are trying to achieve, then you can be pretty certain that they know what your competitors are trying to achieve. So there's a, there's a fine balancing act for you. You bring in a consultant, you want to get all of the information out of them on what your competitors are doing, but you also don't want to tell them too much because you don't want your information to get out. I always issue a word of warning with external consultants, which is actually quite surprising given that, you know, I am one myself so this always makes me laugh. But people will only ever, organizations will only ever put out into the the wide world what they want other organizations to hear. You're never ever going to leak out into the press. You are certainly never going to leak out anything into the press that you don't want leaked out into the press. The only people that will leak out anything that could be advantageous to your competitors are people that are not working in your best interests. So I'll always be very, very wary of anything that you might, again, it's going back to that Google, you know what, what is on Google are other people's opinions. And again, be wary about the information that you find out about your competitors. Cause if you found out information about your competitors and maybe it's an a consultant that's brought in information about your competitors, then either it's information that your competitors want you to know. So who's to say whether it's true or not? Or it's information that your consultant has found out by various means. And there could also be an exchange of information that goes along with that sort of, you know, information that comes in. I'm not saying I am a consultant, I'm not saying that consultants are, are bad people whatsoever, but what I'm saying is that all that information that's out there in the, in the big wide world for everybody to see is information that's there deliberately for the most part. So, we want to make sure that you bring in a consultant because they've got got industry experience and because they have got the, the experience in implementing that type of transformation as well. - I was just going to say, I mean, you're paying for like the knowledge. - Yes. - You know, because I do freelance work as well and because of how well I know in design that I can lay out your textbook way faster basically. - Right. - Than you could do it. - Yeah. - Anybody could do it, but I, I've done it enough where I can, you know, bust it out basically. And that's what you're paying me to do? - Right. - You're for my expertise. - And that's exactly why you would use an external consultant. The other thing that you would find with an external consultant is you're going to find impartiality because an external consultant can weigh up pros and cons and they can give you an unbiased perception. You were just saying about, you know, consultancy that you do and work that you do and you can give any author an unbiased perception on the layout of any book. - Yeah, cause I don't know, I don't care about the subject matter. - Right. - I'm just, does it look right? Is it in, you know, C M I K are, will you be able to send it to the printer and not have them be like, "Huh, this isn't right." You know, I don't care what the subject is. I'm just there to lay out your work. - Yeah. you see, So you can add that impartiality to it. Now the issue with that is though you don't have experience of the subject matter and that means that of course if you were proofread something for instance, you wouldn't necessarily be able to proofread it for content because you wouldn't understand the content. You might be able to check spelling and you'd be able to check format, et cetera. But you wouldn't actually be able to proofread the content. So you have no knowledge and that's exactly the same. And well, not no knowledge, but you have no knowledge of the subject. And that's exactly the same with a, a consultant that you bring into your organization. You can't expect a consultant to come into your organization and have detailed knowledge of your organization. And that's quite often a mistake that organizations will make is they'll bring in a consultant 'cause they've got all of this industry experience and then wonder why this consultant can't advise within a week. Well the consultant can give you very generic advice within a week. Very much like Vonne was saying about I can give you advice on your format, but I cannot give you specific advice within a week because I don't understand your organization. You are going to have to give me background. And of course the background that the consultant has to obtain has to be an impartial obtain of what's a collection of, of subject matter. It cannot be something that they just got from you because that is a biased perspective of background. Now of course the organization-led approach doing it from the internal is going to have the opposite issues in that the organization-led approach will not have industry awareness. The organizational led approach will not have the best practice awareness. The organization-led approach will not have full information on your competitors and what your competitors are trying to achieve. They certainly will not have an impartial perspective either. An organization-led approach will have very firmly a biased slope to it. But that's what you might want. Quite often you want an, you know, an internal approach. What some organizations do, instead of combining the two, they will actually do a phased implementation in, they will roll out or deploy phase one. They will plan at phase one from an organization-led perspective, an internal perspective, and then seek the rubber stamp, the rubber seal of a consultant to say, "Yes, this is in line with best practices, or yes, this will work for you or no, you are going to be too late for your competitors." Which is, you know, possibly another, you know, another pitfall that you could fall into. - Yeah, I, I've, I've actually gone through that, you know, to where we, okay, we think we're going to, we we would like to implement this and then get research analysis. - Right. - They would go out and say like, either you're getting into a space that's too crowded. - Yeah. - Or like, "Yes, this is a great niche because this is what is kind of needed." And then that determined whether we would go forward - Yeah. - Or not. - Yeah. And that, that to be honest, is a very sensible approach and it's always one that I'd advise is that, you know your own organization. However, if you are going to bring a consultant in, you don't want to expend too much energy yourself because the consultant might come in and say, "I'm sorry guys, but you've been wasting your time because this unfortunately is not going to work. Or perhaps that your competitors were doing this six months ago and therefore you are a bit behind the times and you know, you need to rethink your strategy." So I always advise people not to bring- If you are thinking about bringing in a consultant, you want to prepare your organization for that. So you do want to prepare perhaps a, a draft of phase one. However, don't invest too much time in it because the consultant will bring insight of that, nobody else can. So with that in mind, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a little bit of a break now and we're going to come back in part two where we actually look at what's on the screen right now. We will look at those particular steps in a lot more detail. So come back and join us for part two when we look at that organization-led approach. - All right. Well, great information as always Jo. Thank you guys out there for watching. But we're going to go ahead and sign off for ITProTV. I've been your host Vonne Smith. - And, I'm Jo Peacock. - We will see you soon. (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Thank you for watching ITProTV.