Lukasz's Blog

Gartner Symposium - Day 1

Day one of Gartner Symposium kicked off with a keynote presentation focused on digital business.

Digital is disrupting every single industry, both private and public organisations.

CEOs are focused on disruption and speed.

CIO are the CEOs trusted ally - to be guardian, operator and innovator all at once. CIOs need to steward their businesses into the digital realm. CIOs need to change the perception of IT in their organisations. CIOs need to move from partners to trusted allies - making sure they are part of the mission critical conversations and decisions.

Research shows that 3 / 4 CIOs are intuitive thinkers, who are better at solving complex problems in different ways - as opposed to 1 / 3 of other business leaders. Transformation requires intuitive thinking.

Digital transformation has moved beyond start-ups; large organisations are merging analogue and digital business through bimodal business models to create new products & services.

Many businesses are getting stuck at trying to build digital business on top of traditional business structures and processes. Transformation requires a separate stream of ground-up, customer centred activity using new tools and platforms.

Algorithms will overtake data as s key digital assets. Algorithms will solve problems and create new business opportunities. The nature of security will change. By 2020 companies are expected to spend 30% on security but the way we think about security needs to change. People centred security needs to lead the way - nudging people in the right direction.

Businesses are putting customers at the centred through building APIs to open up their systems and build new ways to engage and create value. APIs create new mesh networks for new ideas and innovations.

CIOs need to shed legacy fatalism, ownership bias and cloud fear to help their organisations undergo digital transformation. New services like Cloud present business with a whole new range of options to deliver platforms and services to the business. We need to move from a control mindset to one based on influence.

A session on culture talked about the role of the CIO in changing culture. Culture is often seen as ‘soft’ when in reality it is about people who are at the heart of business.

Culture is intertwined with identity, belonging and change - people and teams can struggle with the various dimensions of culture. It’s essential to help people belong and that they can achieve more collectively than they could achieve alone. Don’t aim to motivate people - help them link what drives them to the organisational goals and vision. It’s essential to set up a vision, create a narrative people can relate to, establish rituals as a group and set up the right governance model.

The CIO lunchtime session was an insight into what makes a good leader.

• Good leaders can answer the question: “what is it all about?” They can create motivation towards a shared goal - in a disruptive era people want to know what it’s all about.
• Leaders are obsessed about communicating with their people. People want to know who you report to, what’s expected of me and how I’m doing. It’s that simple. Leading CEOs are coached to over communicate with their people. People like know what the plan is even if it’s uncertain.
• Good leaders don’t have their heads turned by the latest management fad. There are too many business books written for the benefit of the author, not the reader.
• Good leaders have a healthy appetite for risk. Life expands and contracts relative to your level of courage. We all need a nudge every so often. Things that 'move the needle’ takes risk.
• Good leaders are creative and foster creativity in others. The world isn’t purely rationale. How you say things sometimes matters more than what you say. Almost every situation can be improved by creativity. Creativity isn’t binary, we are all born creative.

I had a one-on-one session with a Gartner Analyst to talk about the adoption of the bimodal approach. It was a useful conversation but it did confirm my hunch that bimodal is still very much an emerging concept and no-one has figured it out fully yet. We’ve had some success with the approach over the past 8-12 months but there’s still more work to do to figure out how the mode 1 (traditional operations) and mode 2 (rapid innovation) work alongside each other and deliver sustainable transformation whilst supporting robust operations.

The afternoon session on eccentric leadership was insightful and entertaining. In mathematics eccentricity describes the degree to which a shape is not a perfect circle.

Eccentrics don’t tend to get anywhere in a straight line (which can be frustrating) but often what they produce can be extraordinary. Embracing this diversity may in fact be a competitive advantage.

Day two coming up tomorrow.