The Monthly “Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: Dynamic IT Competency May 2020

To reinvent its reputation from a cost center to a strategic business partner, IT needs to spend more resources on creating unique competency for driving business growth.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crises, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges.

A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing, and upgoing change continuum. What are digital CIO’s profiles and how to build dynamic IT competency IT to drive changes, get digital-ready, and cultivate the culture of learning and innovating?

Dynamic IT Competency  

Present IT Value Proposition as an “Asset Under Construction” Forward-looking organizations transform IT from a cost center to a value generator, IT management has to learn and explore different methods to set better performance metrics, play the number game wisely, present IT value proposition as an “asset under construction,” or the crucial investment expecting the return.

The Competitive Leverage of IT  In traditional organizations, IT is often set back, waiting for the business’s requests, and IT is perceived by the business as an order taker and slow to change. With fierce competition and rapid changes, digital IT is a paradigm shift in role, responsibility, attitude, and aptitude, and has to meet the needs of the business timely. IT is a major business differentiator and needs to be on top of business initiatives to be successful.

Shaping IT Competency to Drive Digital Transformation Digital businesses are becoming complex and uncertain. Technologies nowadays are the disruptive forces behind digital disruptions, and information is one of the most invaluable assets of modern businesses. Organizations across industrial sectors rely more and more on information and technology. Thus, from a strategic perspective, to survive and thrive, it’s not sufficient to run IT as a commodity service provider, IT is the value-added business partner that makes the company different and achieve more. IT organizations have more to offer but also have more obstacles to overcome. How to shape IT competency and improve IT performance and maturity.

Modern IT organizations with Three Digital Competency IT plays a significant role in the digital paradigm shift. The unprecedented opportunities brought by digital technologies and increasing speed of change can lift up a fast-growing business promptly. It can also reinvent a well-established organization to reach the next level of the business growth cycle. The CIO must run a modern IT organization with core competency. A core competency is a harmonization of multiple organizational capabilities underpinned by business processes, such that it permeates the entire organization with a focus, and in alignment with the resource-based view. Here are modern IT organizations' three digital competencies.

Five Perspectives of Improving IT Competency The characteristics of digital business are dynamic, volatile, uncertain, hyper-connected, and interdependent. IT is the linchpin to run a high-performance digital organization. To reinvent its reputation from a cost center to a strategic business partner, IT needs to spend more resources on creating unique competency for driving business growth, truly understands stakeholders’ expectations, and proposes a well-balanced products/services/solutions portfolio that corresponds to both demand and cost driver with a focus on business priority and achieving strategic business goals with continuous deliveries. Here are five perspectives on improving IT competency.

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