In my day job, my primary role is to meet with customers to discuss the subject of IT Transformation, aka “organizational change”, as it pertains to moving from a traditional silo IT structure to one better positioned for IT as a Service (ITaaS). For better or worse, depending on your stance, these discussions are a natural by-product of all of the attention given to “cloud”, and the dawn of converged architecture and protocols (think Cisco UCS and Fibre Channel over Ethernet). Personally, I think it’s a Good Thing. Companies are coming to the realization that, due to a number of internal & external factors, the way they’ve always done business is not working. Whether it’s due to the pressures of the US and global economies, the growing number of external service providers that make it easier for a company’s users to obtain compute, storage, or application platform services, or whether it’s due to the rise in virtualization and converged technologies, the simple fact is that traditional IT is not sustainable.
The actual process of moving from current state to an ITaaS future state can be quite complex. Some challenges, such as acquiring converged technology, can be overcome quite easily. In fact, I strongly believe that the technology piece is the simplest one. Other challenges, such as process or people changes, can be much more difficult to overcome due to organizational politics, company location, the availability of skilled workers, or even the way the company’s business units are structured. There’s no simple answer, but there are approaches and methodologies that are more successful than others. No matter how a company decides to approach the process of IT transformation, I believe there are a number of requirements or recommendations that will improve the success of a paradigm shift within IT.
Sponsorship
You might be thinking that obtaining sponsorship is a no brainer, but I think you’d be surprised as to how many IT organizations or folks within that organization try to implement a transformative shift without sponsorship. Trying to change an organization without the sponsorship of those folks in charge of that organization is akin to trying to push a boulder up hill. It just isn’t going to work, and if by some stroke of luck it does, it’s not going to be pretty or easy. That being said, it isn’t always a “gimme” that transformation is going to work even with sponsorship, but you’ll have the added advantage that someone in charge can champion transformation with authority.
Accountability & Empowerment
Have you ever been in an IT organization where there’s an opportunity for someone to step up or lead the way with a project, and no one does? I have, and it’s not fun at all. I believe that this is a symptom of an unhealthy political environment. For one reason or another folks don’t want to stand out for the fear that they will end up taking the blame for when things go wrong. I fully and completely understand the mentality of folks who don’t want to be in the spotlight; and the end of the day, most of us aren’t working because we just LOVE to work – it’s a means to an end: retirement, supporting a family, getting out of debt, or more. Who really wants to put their ability to feed their kids at risk? It’s up to the key players within a transformative event to identify this sort of organizational sickness and put things into place that will foster passion, empower their direct reports, and allow them to effect change without the fear of losing their job over upsetting the apple cart.
The flip side of empowerment is accountability. It is absolutely critical to an IT transformation that somebody (or a number of somebodies) be accountable for meeting milestones, leading architectural initiatives, etc. Without accountability, a project’s success is at risk.
Vision & Marketing
It’s a simple thing, really, but one of the hardest ones to cultivate or find. You must have someone with vision leading the IT transformational charge. That vision must be communicated to the entire staff (this is the marketing I referred to), and it must be communicated in a way that everyone understands their role within this new way of doing things.
For example, when an organization change effort is started, I encourage you to start thinking about branding as well. Every artifact, whether it be a PowerPoint deck, an Excel spreadsheet, or a collaboration site like SharePoint, should carry the transformational brand. Give it a name. It doesn’t have to be something catchy, or ground breaking, but give it a name and an image to go with it. You must also communicate that each individual piece of the project is connected to the project as a whole.
See the image? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I did that with PowerPoint Smart Art in about 10 seconds. The point is that organization transformation touches a lot of areas within your organization. Communicate their relationship to each other, as I believe it will be helpful to everyone involved.
Not to keep harping on this point, but I fully believe that everyone within your organization, from executive to first level help desk, should be able to communicate the guiding principles of the transformation. Don’t alienate people by not showing them how they’re involved; instead, bring them into the process and help them make it their own vision, too.
Well, that’s it for now. I’ve got a few more thoughts percolating, but I think I’ll leave it for another time, so as not to cause anyone to blink at the wall of text and think to themselves, “TL;DR”. :)
Very interesting post. I think you make a good point and these are techniques that I used to be successful, so what you say is proven. I would also add that you need to gain support and buy in of your peers. Then they in a sense sell the idea for you and feel that they are also part of the success and not being alienated. Also remain humble.