Combating Traditional Business Leaders on Technology Transformation

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is one of the greatest antagonistic strategy ever written to shatter our adversaries in the frontline. As countless military strategist and general, Sun Tzu rationally wrote the book to win every war he and his armies may run into no matter what or how the battle field or terrain looks like and being fought with. Today, the book becomes an inspiration to every citizen on this planet. It was able to triumph different battles for many generations.

A vigorous tête-à-tête with few IT pro recently about technology and digital transformation within their organization gave me a chance to see how some companies are envisioning and prioritizing technology breakthrough and its impact in their business. Collectively, these individuals agreed that it’s high time to transform traditional business attitude to the so called “new dawn” of digital computing and adopt what’s paramount in the industry today to the advantage of their organization. The barrier to change conventional processes are the silos that surrounds within the business team which IT organization will not able to bring transformation into the company.

What are these silos?

Lack of enthusiasm to technology: Advancing to digital world are only for IT enabled organization! Technology is only for geeks! It’s all about zeros and ones! Why should I pour all my energy into digital transformation when my existing infrastructure is able to provide my needs to run the business? Commonly, these are the resisting statement from business leaders who doesn’t care about transformation and advancement of the organization. Digitization to them is a pain affecting revenue and not for their line of business.

Budget constraint: I don’t have enough money to bring in new technologies. I bought some equipment two years ago, it would be enough to cover my needs. Technology is investment. Yes, it speaks money. But advancing the organization to digital era is worth more than the investment. Corporation has the big chance to grow the business twice of its average target when leveraging technology in their operations. Market trends and forecasts are now digitally gathered through data mining or analytics which creates impact to business decisions.

Lack of information: Oh, I don’t know that. Really, is that it? We can increase our efficiency of our people if we implement this technology? I heard our competitor is now on cloud. Education is the key to heal the wounds of ignorance. Evangelizing business leaders on how technology works today will give new vision and outlook on how organization will drive and plan the transition from primitive approach to fully functional digital enabled organization. Businesses should continue to learn and expose themselves to variety of topics that are trending and evolving in the industry especially for subjects related to computing.

Technology evolve as fast as bullet so organization too. So, to combat with traditional business heads, technology leaders should strengthen its strategy and look on the areas which the company will benefit immediately. IT governance should develop subject matter experts or SMEs in the organization whose responsibility is to drive awareness to the business group about what is happening in the IT industry together with its advantage to the business rather than considering it as a liabilities. Once they become cognizant to the value of digital transformation, influencing your company’s leadership to buy in ideas will no longer be a deterrent to your advocacy of driving results to your existing IT capabilities. Finally, strengthen your strategy towards innovative transformation.

NOTE: This article was previously published as article in my LinkedIn account.