Just because someone owns an expensive wrench doesn’t mean you should let them try and fix your washing machine.
It’s no different in business. A company can employ any number of talented technologists, but without a coordinated approach and a shared vision of the outcome, the resulting customer experience can be less than satisfactory.
“With big data, social media, mobility cloud, and AI changing the way we work, it’s important not to get caught up in simply mastering the latest tools,” says Jim Love, CIO of ITWC, and host of a March 28 panel examining the role the corner office in digital transformation.
“The technology is the easy part. The stumbling blocks for many organizations is simply learning how to make the technology work in a business environment.”
Love says corporate disappointments can often be traced back to a failure to prepare people for change. Change is hard and there will always be push back. If the leadership hasn’t presented the big picture, developed the right collaboration mindset or built resilience into the corporate culture, he says problems will arise.
If leaders are the true differentiators then, what are the skills required to lead through disruptive change? Join Love as he leads a panel of technology leaders at IDC Directions 2017 in an exploration of the priorities for business leaders to drive digital transformation and what they need to do to make the initiative real in their organizations.
Panel members will include Shawn Slack, CIO with the City of Mississauga; Steve Heck, global IT director at Microsoft; Samantha Liscio, senior vice president of enterprise planning & reporting with eHealth Ontario; and Dan Donovan, strategy consultant and former VP of technology at Porter Airlines.
Canvasses for the conversation will include encouraging risk taking (within parameters), creating comfort with ambiguity (big data is messy), stimulating curiosity, and fostering collaboration across verticals.
As author and futurist Jacob Morgan notes in his book The Future of Work, managers of the future are very different than managers of the past. Organizations can no longer approach digital as a “thing” to do but rather “a way of doing things.”
Love’s session is just one of several presentations in a day-long look at emerging market trends, opportunities and predictions on the vendors, products, and strategies best-positioned for growth in Canada. IDC’s top analysts will share their vision for the DX economy.
You can register for Directions 2017 here.