Growth in digital era – first make your organization agile

New technology innovations have empowered start-ups, and changed customers’ behaviors and expectation. These developments have changed the market dynamics in a big way. As a result, traditional ways of competitive advantages are waning at much quicker pace than ever before.

Since majority of the recent market shifts are induced by new technologies, and technology is associated with speed – one of the prerequisite to sustain growth in this digital era is to make organization agile. Agile organization could adapt to changing market condition rapidly and respond to customer demands timely.

Established companies can take advantage of their IT function’s agile model to scale it. However, there is more to it when it comes to agility across the organization. Based on my experience, a company should address three crucial elements to bring about agility and flexibility:

• Organization design
• Culture
• Processes

First two elements have to do with how people in a company interact with each other and make decisions, and the last one deals with series of actions to accomplish an outcome. The best levers to begin the agility is streamlining seams across functions or business-units where information is shared. Furthermore, if governance and competencies are properly leveraged that could bring changes in behaviors which eventually produce lasting improvements.

Have your say: ashok.bhatt@freshwaters.co

What’s in the name – Technology with different speeds

Lately a concept has surfaced and it’s catching up fast in the consulting word. It’s about dividing technology function based on speed and operations. I am in agreement that companies need to have right mix of talent. Talent that can efficiently maintain legacy system and keep up with new technologies. However, the way this idea is positioned in the mind is wrong. By creating an imaginary line and dividing technology based on unreal preeminence criteria, we are needlessly creating silos within the same function.

On the one hand we are emphasizing the need of an agile environment, but on the other hand we deliberately draw the line within the same function. This will defeat the very purpose of the agile environment – seamless collaboration with speed.

I think instead of dividing, the focus should be on developing and sustaining right talent with an emphasis on comprehensive technology. That way business leaders will send the message that they are committed to address both innovation and legacy challenges more efficiently and rapidly by addressing speed along with collaboration, simplification, and unification.

Have your say: ashok.bhatt@freshwaters.co