Kathy Gibson reports from Gartner Symposium in Cape Town – While the technology exists to allow organisations to succeed in digital transformation, they still need to change the way they run their organisations and how their leaders behave.
“In the future, more than half of your business will be derived from the company’s digital features,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice-president of Gartner.
But it also means that organisation structures have to change, along with the behaviour of leaders, and their budgets and metrics
The move to digital will break down organisational structures and requires a new model with cross functional teams working at scale.
“For example, consider whether you should integrate research, product development, engineering, customer experience and supply chain into one team all enabled by technology.
“This is the only way to innovate at scale. More and more, you cannot seperate technology from business functions.”
Sondergaard recommends that companies start with two or three functions, and scale from there.
The behaviour of organisations and leaders is vital, and bimodal is important here. “This is how orgnisations drive digital in the organisation to the core.
“We should cultivate innovation in both modes, though,” Sondergaard stresses. “The organisational structure itself and behaviour needs to be cross functional and bimodal.”
But it’s not just about organisational behaviour; business and IT leaders need to act and think bimodal as well.
“This will also change the budget and metrics. It is about funding teams basaed on desired business outcomes, rather than on technology.
