Digital Transformation Initiative
The phrase, “nothing is to be considered of a great priority than anything concerning digital transformation…” has been of common use to many organization executives. This is due to the fact that digital technologies are rapidly advancing, which are then paving ways for radically new ways to deliver greater value to customers, change the underlying economics of the markets, and alter competitive landscapes. The demands required on technology functionality are on the rise, as they range from operations, manufacturing, and supply to marketing, human resources, customer analytics, and sales (Sacolick, 2017). This fact then makes enterprises around the world to be under pressure so that they can implement digital transformation initiatives that would enhance employee productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Significantly, as digital technologies continue to prove their importance to enterprise success, the roles played by the CIO is correspondingly enhanced and more critical. In order for the CIO to keep pace with technological innovations and digitalization, they are always advised to reshape their roles from which may be delivery executive to business executive. They are expected to enable their enterprise to move beyond digital pilots and experiments and drive towards bringing a digital that is of best practices to the business scale.
Assuming the roles and duties of a CIO of a federal agency, there are several factors I need to consider in order to run the federal government enterprises. For the purposes of leading in digital transformation, my agency would consider implementing cultural/organizational transformation. As it is known that long term, full digital transformation requires redefining enterprise mindset, talents, processes, talent, and capabilities for the digital world if I am the CIO of a federal agency these are among the factors that I would consider implementing and imposing to the structure of the business set up of the federal government. In order to take active strategies that would bring significant change to the businesses of the federal state, it requires my field of operation to have an agile workflow, decentralized decision making, a bias towards testing and learning activities, and a greater reliance on business ecosystem.
Cultural transformation can easily be described as the dynamic process of irreversibly changing the business outlook, which is in the cultural perspective of an organization and corresponding its processes, policies, and behavior that would result in a more efficient and effective mode of operation (Bongiorno et al., 2018). With cultural transformation implemented to the federal enterprises, its main ideology is to formulate the way in which beliefs, values, and unspoken rules are imposed on organizations’ interaction for the workers and managing bodies. This particular strategy is introduced to the structure so that it can enhance the performance of the organization.
In one way or another, all the four elements of digital initiatives prove to be of great significance when implied in carrying out the business operation. The difference lies that each element performs its specified duties towards enriching the prosperity of the organization in the way of its operation. Concerning this, considerations of having cultural transformation to the federal government operation prove to avail several advantages that other digital initiatives may fail to facilitate. It is known that any organization with a strong and outstanding culture set up gains tangible and intangible benefits. Considering that one of the major barriers to having a successful organizational transformation is the culture of the workplace; the urgency to have a cultural change in most of the organizations is often neglected in transformation initiatives, and due to this negligence, it results to high rates of failure in the transformation projects. This attribute makes the cultural transformation to be unique in its own way over other digital transformation initiatives. Similarly, the cultural transformation has other benefits that are realized when once effectively implied in the business field. Some of the intangible benefits realized are so crucial that you simply cannot estimate their value to the company.
One of the benefits realized from implementing cultural transformation is that over time it generally evolves along with business strategy, and this process becomes mutually reinforced. Another benefit of having cultural transformation is that the employee can understand the progress and can be more willing to support the efforts required to achieve it. Equipping my agency with the correct working environment, the federal organization employee is less likely to quit, they will be exposed to a training environment that favors their desires which will result for them in wanting to work every day. Although fostering, the positive working culture is often seen as a time-consuming process and seems to drain much of the company resources. Still, with the process fully implemented, it offers the chance to minimize the chances of daily frustrations in the business operation.
When wanting to carry out an organizational level culture change, several levers can be identified in the processes, which are used to reinforce organizational culture, and that enable the needs to be realigned with a strategy that may be new in promoting cultural changes. Some of these resources require are;
Organizational structure: In order to promote efficient and effective cultural change, accountabilities and authorities should be aligned and consistent with each other, and with the desired behaviors and norms.
Leadership system: The business should be able to choose, train or develop leaders who consistently want to take part in building new norms and behaviors and also take up in full functionality towards the effectiveness in managing the people-related aspects of the change.
Organizational competencies: As managers and employees will now and then need to learn new skills when the organization is transforming, a new competency development strategy will often be required.
Performance management: This program avails the program through which the organization employees can be guided towards the correct behavior system, which may involve performing, planning and goal setting, coaching, and regular appraisal.
Communications: A comprehensive communication system that is customized to people in various functional and other areas of the company that will contribute to promoting and sustaining group changes to the new standards and behavior.
Compensation, benefits, and rewards: This scheme makes sure that the desired new behaviors are rewarded or otherwise penalizing employees who do not adhere to demonstrate the desire that is connected to rewarding and benefiting.
Staffing and deployment: Creating this program would ensure that the job vacancies and roles are always fitted with the right working personnel, who are well equipped with the purposeful skills and behavior that are needed to bring up the required changes.
As culture is regarded as a universal concept, it comprises of numerous aspects, for instance, collective beliefs, ethics, values, methods of working, assumptions and standards, due to these aspects, many leaders face challenges in seeking to reshape their culture in a way that it is more innovative. Although it is difficult to nearly avoid each of the hurdles in the process, the ability to figure out and discover the means of removing the most common obstacle to cultural change is more important. Some of the obstacle that can be encountered and their ways to offer remedy are:
Resistance to change: It can be difficult to shape people’s attitudes and mindsets. In most cases, people are able to see and so their own, have a fixed strategy of doing their own things. Although nothing is wrong with someone having such a mind, the underlying assumptions and beliefs can sometimes hinder innovation. Similarly, when things are repetitively done in a certain single way for a prolonged period without change, it becomes the norm. This could easily result in workers becoming blind to any unforeseen inefficiencies at the working places. To curb this, as the CIO, it essential to understand the reason why workers are against the change. This can be done by starting to recognize small victories. One important way, to begin with, is by, for instance, opening a conversation through an idea challenge, once you have gained some first positive experiences, people will be able to look at the upsides and will be more open to improving and new opportunities.
Not communicating the purpose: Without a greater purpose, people can easily start to see their job as another paycheck. It can also be hard always to get people to do their best. There is no direction without purpose, and there is really no way to reach your destination without direction. Communicate the purpose begins by clarifying your vision and turning it into an overwhelming story. The strategy of overcoming this shortcoming can be done by creating a movement. This helps persuade people to align their actions with the common objective and to become members of the movement.
Rigid organizational structures: Organizational structures, especially in larger organizations, are usually quite hierarchical. While it is necessary to have some kind of hierarchy, it might also cause innovation inefficiencies if it restricts the flow of information. In order to discourage this trend, the organization innovations need to take place at all organizational levels. Although, there is a risk that the feedback and evaluation procedures will slow and fail to be effective when ideas need to pass through various management levels. Therefore, too high organizational barriers and hierarchy will ultimately ruin innovation.
Lack of commitment and reinforcement: The main reason for having the innovation is to reach the organization’s set goals. One of the reasons that make this failure is due to the low levels of commitment from the managing bodies. In cases where innovation is seen as usual activity, it could easily get in the way of normal routines and tasks. In cases where short goals are set, it may result in turning to long before the goals are accomplished. In order to achieve the best possible results, innovation should be linked to the actual way your teams work and projects. This ensures that people always progress and learn while they do what they should do.
Bibliography
Bongiorno, G., Rizzo, D., & Vaia, G. (2018). CIOs and the digital transformation: a new leadership role. Cham: Springer International Publishing: Imprint: Springer.
Sacolick, I. (2017). Driving digital: the leader’s guide to business transformation through technology. New York: AMACOM.