The days of stating things like, "We are not a technology company, we do X," are over. (Fill in your choice of traditionally non-tech domains for X: finance, farming, etc.)
Every company should have a digital urgency: a healthy dose of paranoia, knowing your business can be severely disrupted by a more nimble and tech-focused firm.
PayPal was not invented by a bank. Uber was not created by Yellow Cab. Blockbuster did not invent Netflix. Disrupters can come from anywhere and anyone.
If your leadership does not believe your company is a technology company, you must act fast. Otherwise your business may not exist in 5 years.
Here are some thoughts on how your company can stay relevant and use technology as a business driver.
IT is no longer a back-office function
Most great IT departments help deliver key business solutions which drive down costs, improve productivity and efficiency, enable scalability, and increase security. The continuous improvement mindset of great IT employees is something which is hard to teach, but exponentially valuable. Combine that with the "anything is possible with technology" attitude, and you have found a powerful digital engine that is capable of being at the front-lines of business decisions.
General Electric (GE), the traditional industrial juggernaut, is now a digital-first company. Their Predix platform helps power what they call the Industrial Internet. It enables asset and operations optimization by providing a standard way to run industrial-scale analytics and connect machines, data, and people.
Jeff Immelt, GE CEO, talks about how the GE Chief Information Officer (CIO) role has changed. Immelt recognized the amount of technical expertise GE had in-house, and combined the CIO's org (IT) with the engineering org (OT) to make a new Digital org driving revenue for the company through technology. Listen to his keynote address at GE's Minds and Machines conference where he describes their transformation.
External strategic radar
Every company should have a constant pulse on the external technology landscape: trends, start-up activity, etc. However, it needs to be structured. Thresholds should be created to know when the company should take action in a particular direction. When is a new concept really worth the investment? How early do we want to be on this trend?
The list of trends can be specific to your company's domain, but can also contain a few outliers that may not be initially obvious to how it may eventually fit into future plans. The list should be regularly monitored and reviewed at senior levels, and be visible to management at all levels.
Internal innovation: Hack Days
Autonomy is quite possibly the single most powerful "tool" for bringing about innovation and creativity from individuals. A Hack Day (or days) can further enable this.
Mentioned in my previous post about motivation, some companies, like Atlassian, give their employees the complete freedom to work on whatever they want for a short amount of time (24 hours each quarter, in Atlassian's case). They have seen new product ideas, enhancements, and other improvements come as a result of these.
I propose variants of this to see what works best for your organization. One variant might be to have an idea capturing tool used prior to a Hack Day, and participants can choose which of the top ideas they want to be a part of creating during the Hack Day itself.
The key is for management to be on board with giving their employees the time to do this. In addition, management must make this visible and regularly commit to helping fund or enable some of the best ideas to fruition. This is not a one-time event. This must become part of the culture.
In summary, the digital threat is real. The need for digital urgency is required from all levels of all organizations. Make the time to get the best out of your technologists, constantly monitor the external landscape, and enable creativity and innovation from within.
