DTWS: Becoming enterprisingly agile

In TM Forum’s Digital Transformation Tracker surveys, agility consistently ranks at the top of the list of drivers for transformation because it is necessary to compete and innovate. Adoption of automated processes, data analytics and open architectures can enable organization-wide agility, but without the human factor – that is, a workforce that understands the value of agility – it’s an unattainable goal. In a panel discussion this week during Digital Transformation World Series, four industry leaders came together to discuss how employees, enabled by leadership, can make agility achievable.

The

snail

-like movement of traditional telecoms operators

when it comes to

transforming their IT

i

s nothing new.

The causes are many

,

but the main roadblock boil

s

down to

inability to quickly change internal culture and skills to meet the demands required for digital transformation.

In fact,

TM Forum’s

newest

Digital Transformation Tracker

4

survey shows that

the industry is starting to accept that

digital transformation is more about cultural change than the adoption of new technologies.

Industry leaders from

Elisa,

IBM, Telekom

Malaysia

and

Vodacom

discussed the talent challenge during a panel

this week

and offered their advice on how to build an agile workforce that is empowered to

create opportunity and improve productivity.

Change starts at the top

In order for companies to make any internal impact on

agility and ultimately

transformation

,

Willie Stegmann, Group CIO at Vodacom

,

explained that the actions taken

by

leadership

will

pave the way for the rest of the business to become truly agile

.

“It starts for me … with the leadership team,” he said. “I think you have to model the way. In our case we did. Even though we focused a lot on ‘agile’, it was more than just Agile frameworks and templates and the like. It was really to change ways of working.”

Stegmann

’s examples included introducing simple, basic practices for agility, encouraging empathy,

and removing micromanagement

to

give teams the space to innovate.

“

The knowledge

,

the insight and the wisdom [

are

] not necessarily at the top

,” he said. “

L

et

’

s

give people

[doing]

the work the opportunity to actually show what they can do and empower them.”

The reasons behind agility

Another important step in driving agility

is

focusing on the reasons behind agility,

which

should be

improving customer centricity and

increasing productivity and innovation

,

according to

Siva

n

Umapathy

, C

IO

at Telekom Malaysia

Berhad

. Businesses can

take a quick approach by beginning with

projects that

can

show immediate benefits to stakeholders and users (including end users)

.

“We looked at the base of the organization and [saw that it] already had the technical capabilities,” said Umapathy when describing how Telekom Malaysia transformed its workforce. “What it came down to is looking at how we can deliver things better, faster and cheaper, and Agile methodology was the right and purposeful activity that we needed to take on.”

Investing in upskilling

Indeed, business imperatives for Agile transformation have changed over the last 10 years, said Tina Marron-Partridge, Managing Partner, Talent and Transformation, IBM. “Looking back, Agile has been about making things easy and to get work done,” she said. Now, it’s also about managing employee experience, building workforce resiliency, investing in leadership and upskilling staff.

“We think about engineering skills, the technology skills, our core skills and the domains we have,” Marron-Partridge said. “But if we can teach our people, across all the domains, agility and design thinking skills, it allows for a culture of invention and creativity that would not necessarily naturally come through traditional routes, and then real innovation can be released there.”

The IT

organization

in particular

can be profoundly impactful across the enterprise when armed with these skill

s

, because

“it holds the key in many ways to the tools and the experiences that we have and how we work

,

”

she

added.

Time is money

Unfortunately, becoming agile

doesn’t

happen overnight.

Businesses

must ensure they allow themselves

time to change to an agile culture

and

agile mindset

, noted

Henri

Korpi

, Executive Vice President, International Digital Services at Elisa,

whose own

digital journey started back in 2006

.

“We had to start very

,

very small, taking small steps towards a bold vision

,”

Korpi

said, explaining

that these small steps on the long road to agility encompassed things like

developing A

gile

capabilities and working practices, understanding the design thinking/lean startup mentality and embracing failure as a learning experience.

“It has required a totally different type of mindset to start with, and that sort of needs to be taken gradually, and needs to be eaten in pieces,” Korpi said.

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