Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Digital Readiness of Organizations

 It’s critical to discover the strategic and predictive pathway to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Most organizations have a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos, the old way and the new way to do things, etc. Therefore, evaluating the digital readiness of the business is important to allow room for adjustments and keeping the organization dynamic and informative, in order to manage a high mature business.

Change readiness: Digitalization is a radical change. Closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in the environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients, and employees are evolving naturally. Either individually or at the organizational level, change readiness is an important indicator of the business competency. We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing the business today. The only certainty leaders of organizations will have is that their business will change. It is only a matter of time. How do you assess an organization that is ready for changes? How can you measure change readiness? And can you change the process of change management to ensure it's effective rather than fluffy? The change shouldn’t be just a few random efforts put on the surface, it must be defined in its base elements such as process, structure, culture, and associated benefits to be achieved through productivity, financial and innovation lenses. It’s important to take the logical scenario, apply the right strategy and methodology. It is one thing to establish a future state and understand the intended outcome of the future state. Therefore, those who prepare their employees to cope with all coming change will be the companies of the future.  Successful organizations see the changes coming and with preplanning to overcome the resistance before it even manifests. They build change and as an ongoing business capability and differentiated competency. Change Management, therefore, should be an adequate, logical, and systematic effort to any environmental shift. Change readiness starts at the top, how do you engage with today's management and make them change themselves into the role needed today for modern digital Management. Businesses will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability.

Quality readiness: Quality is defined by a number of factors, such as effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility, innovation, performance, manageability, operability, reusability, reliability, availability, or maturity. Quality has both tangible and intangible characteristics. When you see it, you know it. Quality readiness is a key indicator of overall business differentiation and maturity. Where there are ineffectiveness and inefficiency in business management, there are quality gaps existing. Developing the business scope of best/next process to focus on improving quality attributes takes work and a level of credibility within the organization. From the business management perspective, quality (Efficiency + Effectiveness = Q) is doing the right thing right, the first time, with no backlog and wastage and highest customer satisfaction rate. Generally, you have to have effectiveness first, and then make the effect more efficient. Quality Management is basically the fundamental purpose of serving the customer and meeting/exceeding their expectations. The rest of them are the tools, which can be used as the situation warrants. From a talent management perspective, quality is the perfect mix of confidence and humility; character and charisma, creativity and discipline; toughness and gentleness; intelligence and childishness; uniqueness and fit-in, inquisitiveness and resourcefulness, the right dose of ego, and the good taste, etc. As a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience, quality management is to help them in doing what they are doing better, easier and so on. What is required is clarifying the purpose and engaging all the people involved in working together as a team to excel in the delivery of product/service/solutions. Quality management is not just the task of one specific department, it is the cross-disciplinary practice.


Inclusiveness readiness: Digital means blurred functional/organizational/industrial/geographical borders or territories. It is a waste of resources to leave any valuable human potential left unrecognized, untapped and unused. Good management practice is the ability to harness the best potential of all human resources in the organization. Diversity becomes the hotbed of innovation and inclusiveness should be the digital tune for leading the paradigm shift. The business leaders must work with the digital fit mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle. There are all kinds of differences that exist between individuals. Because creativity is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. To build a creative team or a highly innovative organization, the focus of inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas. It is important for building a creative team having people who do not have the same viewpoint of varying issues so that they can complement each other’s viewpoint, and spark innovation or the alternative way to do things. When insight rules the day, mislabeling or misjudgment got fixed and bias, especially at the unconscious level, got taken care of effectively. Orient people and make them aware of the inclusiveness of their organization or team, help them understand the value of harnessing the unique competency and cognitive difference. From the top down, the organization or society is on the right way to embrace diversity from both heart and mind; and inclusiveness becomes the digital new normal.

Diagnose the real issues of the business and make an objective assessment of digital readiness. The journey of digitalization often needs to work cross boxes instead within the box; go broad to embrace the digital ecosystem and dig deeper to fine-tune the underlying functions, empower people to evolve, innovate and accelerate. It’s critical to discover the strategic and predictive pathway to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

0 comments:

Post a Comment