Today, I attended an event about driving digital disruption beyond 2020.
One of the key messages about today’s event was that the rate of change in technology is at the fastest it has ever been. Quite frankly, I couldn’t agree more. Even discussing this further with others attending the event, they shared concerns about just how fast vendors are developing new technologies that even channel partners selling these technologies are having a hard time keeping their staff trained and up-to-date to know enough to sell, design and implement these technologies.
There were some other interesting points about how IT teams need to change and become more of an enabler of the business. Teams need to focus efforts on transitioning, or maturing, through the following steps to really drive value to the business and build a true partnership with the business:
- Provide Stability
- Continuously Optimise
- Increase Agility and Business Responsive
- Drive Business Innovation and Experimentation
It also raised a question as to “What’s stopping us?” This is a valid question. One that I don’t believe is asked enough or thought through enough. What is limiting our speed to deliver business value? What are the constraints holding us back? True disruption and innovation will come from those that have taken the time to understand these questions and find ways to work around them.
It is interesting, because today, I feel that there is so much that me and my team could do to really drive disruption in our organisation and our biggest challenge is prioritising some time to being innovative when everything we work on is top priority, or worse… urgent!
Talking to others after the event, it really was apparent that this is a common thing. Finding that even someone working in a very similar role as me for a much larger organisation in a similar industry also has the same challenges I have around disruption and innovation in technology, and in processes in his organisation.
IT Leaders probably have some work to do in educating Business Leaders more about how technology can be better leveraged to improve key areas of the business, such as the Customer’s Experience, the Employee’s Experience, Operational Processes and the overall Business Model.
How you do you drive disruption and innovation in your team? What challenges do you face?
Until next time.
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