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.
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
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
Watch live and on-demand Digital Transformation World Series content now! Not registered yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here.