NOVEMBER 2023CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9they don't have a clear picture of their value chain. Don't try to transform without understanding this, otherwise you may just be automating inefficiencies.A key takeaway here is that the transformation must be sponsored by the business, ideally directly from the C suite. If senior leadership is not focused on the benefits of the changes and committed to the long haul, the enterprise will not have the support needed to push past boundaries and see it through to the improved efficiencies of the future. Motivation should not be hard to come by; today keeping pace with change is an existential thread and this includes not allowing technical debt to build to the point of suffocation. People, people, peoplePeople are your most valuable assets, the rise of AI and automation won't change that, they're just new tools.Gooddecision-making still requires the right people in the right roles to support the updated processes.As transformation rolls out, your teams will be naturally uncertain how their role has changed and having that clarity will be more critical than ever. This isn't just for the actors in these processes, anyone who now owns new functions or tools must be empowered in their new responsibilities and you will need to communicate to the rest of the organization about these new people/roles. Without consistent and clear communication on these points, teams get confused, find workarounds and generally slow down or stop work.You can't manage what you don't measureAs we transform towards more efficient processes, we should reduce the time to market of our of products or services but remember that if we're not careful this can also be a way to turn out garbage very quickly too.Increasing speed and scale might expose other gaps that weren't noticeable at your previous levels. And output should never come at the expense of quality. Along with being clear about your goals as previously discussed, each of the important objectives and key results that you're targeting should have clear indicators measuring progress towards those OKRs, not proxy metrics. Sometimes we fall into the trap of measuring what's easiest to measure. Another common issue is that measuring improvement is difficult or impossible because our old processes were so irregular they couldn't be measured and we have no baseline. This topic alone has filled many books, but for now suffice to say that if you are not able to define some kind of measure of success and dimension(s) of improvement it's very likely you still haven't defined the business problem and value proposition fully yet.Transformation should not be a onetime event like a parade, but an ongoing activity, and even better a mindset; one focused on constant improvement and ever-changing adaption to shifting market dynamics. Don't fall into the trap of thinking it's over when the last of the parade clears out, there's still work to do. Transformation should not be a onetime event like a parade, but an ongoing activity, and even better a mindset; one focused on constant improvement and ever-changing adaption to shifting market dynamics
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