Navigating IT Digital Transformation via Inquiries

Digital is the age of choices; just like consumers have more options to shop via multi-channel platforms; organizations also have more opportunities and risks as well in scaling or innovating their businesses. It is important to make an objective assessment and navigate digital transformation via inquiries.
Is a major transformation necessary? As every successful change or business transformation program, the business management should follow the 'Golden Circle' starting with the WHY? (motivation), then addressing the HOW? (process) and the WHAT? (results) at the end. Organizations today need to constantly improve the business and seeing change as an opportunity while keeping a holistic overview of the business growth for the long term. A digital paradigm is an emerging digital ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that set limits or boundaries; and also offer the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new under the digital rules. Organizations and their people learn through their interaction with the environment. They act, observe the consequences of their actions, make inferences about those consequences and draw implications for future action. To achieve such a state of dynamic balance, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed.
Is the current state of your organization optimal for the type of transformation you are choosing? Transformation starts with the realization that where you are currently no long can deliver the business objective and vision of success for your company and your shareholders. The more you can clearly paint the image of why the company is in the situation it is in and provide the vision of a new world, the better it is. Determining what the future needs to look like (what the transformation must look like) is the next step. It is important to keep the communications open, as well as keeping people focused on things they can control. You have to create an environment where people can be successful. In line with being open and honest balance the major change, embed it amongst the current perception and comprehension of the overall position and direction and then relativity will kick in, people will set their own priorities, take ownership and act.  So the organization of the future starts with a changing nature.
Do you need to transform your IT organization before transforming the business? Every CIO should be capable of having a vision and not just living inside of the IT box. They must be able to understand the business strategy, the operations strategy, and the IT strategy. The CIO must be able to work with fellow C-level executives to contribute to the vision and direction of the company. The CIO should be able to envision not only where a company believes it is going, but how it will get there, and how it might be missing out on opportunities because of limitations on understanding. Further, they should not only be able to align IT to business but formulate ways to drive business. Therefore, the CIO has to have the capability to look ahead and imagine what is possible for his/her organization as part of the whole, then execute the right options as part of the overall vision for the firm/company via logic steps
Digital transformation is a long-term journey, it has to be clearly understood and to satisfy both short term gratification and long term outcomes. It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking and recasting the way we view ourselves, the systems of which we are the part of the environments in which we live, and the way we run the business and improve its effectiveness, efficiency, and maturity.
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