The CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXXV: Running IT as a Change Agent

IT Management is a strange animal, in that the capabilities are there, the data is there - but the motivations are often confused. Technology drives changes nowadays, but IT is often considered the function slower to change with “controlling mentality.”  IT tends to measure itself against trivial things IT considers important but are often less important and impactful in the business lens. More importantly, how to deal with the management dilemmas in running IT as a Change Agent to catalyze the business grow and improve the overall organizational capabilities?  

Running  IT as a Change AgentHow IT Change Management Aims at Improving Customer Experience? Digital is the age of the customer, being a customer-centric business is in every forward-thinking organization’s agenda. Corporate IT plays a significant role in digitizing every touch point of customer experience and sharpening key business capabilities. IT implementations are core to strategic changes today. However, many IT organizations fail to reach customers’ expectation fully. Did it achieve the original objective? Did the customer experience actually improve significantly? And, how sustainable is the change or would it break down? Has the entire organization embraced it well? What are the IT change management principles & implementation best practices?
Five Aspect in Leading Change challenges: The speed of change is accelerated, organizations large or small spend significant time and resource to deal with the Big Changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as adopting a new software tool. However, statistically, more than 70% of change management effort fail to achieve the expected result, what are the critical elements in change management, and how to weave them more seamlessly to orchestrate a harmonized change symphony?
Change as an Ongoing Capability: Change is a volatile subject, just like change itself. Everything changes continuously by following the laws of evolution, and the rate of change is accelerated. Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, at the more static industrial era, change is a one-time project; at digital age, change has to become an ongoing capability.
What does a Change Leaders/Managers actually Deliver? People change for a reason; they must have a reason to want to adopt the change. The question to be asked is why are you wanting the change? What do you expect to gain from adopting the change? That is where the change originator defines their deliverables and benefits, in real measurable, quantifiable terms. But what is “Change Management” and how can you define its value?  What does a change leaders/managers actually deliver?
The Cause and Effect of Silos: Silo is perhaps one of the most paradoxical symptoms in running business at the industrial era, on one side, most of the organizations are still operating in the functional base to improve efficiency; on the other side, the digital nature of hyperconnectivity and interdependence makes it inevitable to break down the silo, because more often than not, the silo thinking becomes the root cause of ineffective leadership; the silo team fragment the strategy, stagnate execution, motivate the unhealthy internal competition and cause more problems than benefits. More specifically, what’s the cause and effect of silos and silo thinking?
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