Case Study: Beginning Two Transformation Journeys

This is the 10th entry in a blog series about enterprise digital transformation, with an emphasis on API programs.

In the last month I’ve had the opportunity to help two major enterprises begin to align their digital programs with their overarching business objectives.  Each was a multi-day workshop with a mix of change agents and influencers, and executives participating.  It is remarkable how eye-opening these exercises were for all involved.  

Common Starting Points

One of these was an international bank, the other was a federal government agency.  While at first blush these sound radically different, the lessons learned are actually quite similar.  Both operate in increasingly digital ecosystems, comprised of individual and enterprise customers, channel partners, supply chain partners, employees, solution partners, government agencies, and more.  Both entities have already invested in modern websites, a few apps, and in a markitecture (conceptual marketing architecture) for the  infrastructure intended to support the transition to digital.  The cloud is prominent in each of these blueprints.  

In both instances, the executive leadership has an enlightened vision of how their enterprises need to adapt to the digital age:  they both need to become more open and able to cooperate within these ecosystems much easier and faster than they have before.  It’s simple to say, but a bit more difficult to do.

Both also have a small but motivated core of doers, who have a strong technical software development background.  In one instance, they are mobile-first type of developers, steeped in the modern technologies of the web and mobile, in the other instance they are more legacy big-system software development.  These doers have been given the task to break new ground, and discover what the enterprise should do to move forward in its journey to become more digital.  In the bank, these doers are more culturally deferential to their leadership, more concerned about their jobs;  in the agency, they are ready to break glass and change the way business is done.  

Now to the workshops.

Bringing the Journeys to Life

We opened each workshop with the context that together we would set the direction of the transformation, define it in a way that executives could approve (likely all the way to the board level), and guide relevant functional areas to align their activities toward this common goal.  Invigorating stuff.  Yet as we discussed the broad objectives of digital transformation and what everyone was currently doing to move the ball forward, some quite tactical issues and barriers came up and moved into the center of the discussion.  To help connect the day-to-day to the bigger picture, we created a “parking lot” on the whiteboard to log the issues and annotate them in a way that showed their relevance to transformation, to come back to later.  This showed that everyone was already working in the right direction, albeit in their own individual way;  it also created the space to move forward.  

With common global digital objectives now front of mind, the discussion could move to uncover what executives should declare as specific outcomes for their own enterprise transformation, and what the return on the investment in digital should be.  In one instance, everyone was thinking about specific “digital” use cases, things that customers should experience and that products should contain.  In the other, everyone was thinking about how their jobs should change to be more effective.  Both conversations turned out to be great vehicles to get specific outcomes on the board, formulated in terms of a handful of enterprise KPIs.  Stepping back, everyone agreed that these KPIs were the ones that executives had been talking about, just sometimes in indirect ways.  Making these goals explicit and directing funding explicitly to achieve them would help everyone in the enterprise.  

At this point the two workshops diverged.  

Two Paths

In the first workshop, the participants were ready to define specific projects that would break ground and demonstrate how the enterprise would function in the future.  Following a rapid iteration methodology with sharp time boxed discussions, the team culled the existing IT project backlog into a short list of digital projects that could be launched right away, including the shared business capabilities that these projects would need.  These capabilities were expressed as APIs, and the specific software assets behind the APIs were identified.  The process also resulted in a backlog of discarded projects, with common problems identified for which they were discarded, and points that identified how those problems could be remedied.  Some of the discarded projects were the favorites of executives, so this would provide the mechanism to address and resolve those problems.

The second workshop resulted in a short list of key decision makers, and the specific actions they would be asked to take.  The actions ranged from certifying a new security paradigm, to changing how projects were funded, to establishing a permanent API program.  The actions all targeted shared capabilities, and identified specific recommendations that are aligned across them.  The requests also demonstrated how the executive actions would directly impact the enterprise KPIs, and what the team would be doing to impact the way work was being done.  

Similar Directions

Note that both workshops tackled topics that both organizations will have to deal with at some point.  One can see that in the first workshop, the next step will be to come up with the short list that decision makers will be asked to act on, otherwise the projects will stall.  The second workshop has already started down that track.  For the second workshop, the next step will be to identify the projects that will exercise the capabilities unlocked by executive action, and deliver demonstrable value and wins in return.  The first workshop already has that list.  

The point is that while there is a small set of shared key elements of success in digital transformation no matter what the business is, the path each enterprise has to take is unique to its culture, existing capabilities, and exact outcomes that executives and change agents are aiming for.  There is not only one rigid way to move the needle. 

Has your organization had a chance to bring together key people, to have these conversations?  What have you learned in the process? 

Looking forward to your thoughts!