• Home
  • About
  • Innovation
  • Organizational Change
  • Workshops & Simulations
  • Contact
AdOPT

blog

Are You Engaging the Right People in IT Transformation?

10/28/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Senior leaders usually define IT transformation initiatives.  After the initial vision and strategy is outlined, it usually falls to the next layer of management to work through the details.   Often, the organization experiences delays in achieving the outcome and they never achieve the expected return on investment.
 
Why does this happen?
 
Management has staff that are busy handling the day to day operations.  Their normal course of action is to shield their teams from projects that will take up their time.  They participate in projects for them.  With critical initiatives such as IT transformation, staff at all levels within the IT organization must participate to ensure the right outcomes and facilitate buy in.
 
A manager is monitoring the work, developing the team, and helping staff work through barriers to complete their operational responsibilities but they aren’t actually doing the work.  They don’t know the details of what it takes to get the job done.  When working on transformation activities, the IT transformation team needs to know the reality of how the work gets done.  Without this information, they often pursue improvement opportunities that will offer little in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, or cost savings.  Many times, the team won’t recognize the true root cause of the issue until they’ve spent time and money on improvement actions.
 
In addition, when frontline staff are not involved in defining the changes associated with the initiative, they are less likely to adopt the changes in a timely manner.  They won’t initially change the way they work or they will make the change and then revert back to the old way of doing things.
 
Engaging staff at all levels within the IT organization is critical to success however; we must also address another critical audience – the customer.
 
With any IT transformation, the result will be changes to how the organization identifies services, makes investments, organizes to handle the work, manages services, and interfaces with their customers.  Changes within IT directly affect your customers and end users.
 
How does an IT organization know the critical components of an IT transformation initiative without engaging their customers?  Engagement of the customer requires more than a hallway conversation or a review of customer satisfaction data.  Critical customers should be engaged in transformation strategy discussions.  They will need a seat at the table. 
 
Once the initial transformation goals and objectives are defined, end users should be engaged to understand their existing experience with IT and their recommendations for improvement.    
 
Throughout the initiative, customer and end user feedback should be incorporated into key decision making.  Open communication regarding decisions and key changes is critical. 
 
IT customers and end users can provide a wealth of information which can help to formulate plans and activities.  They can also become true partners in achieving the intended outcomes. 
 
IT transformation requires more than a solid vision, strategy, objectives, and plan, it requires feedback and engagement of staff and customers at all levels in the organization. ​


Don't miss another blog.  Join our mailing list today!

At AdOPT, we are transformation consultants focused on strategy, innovation process, and culture to increase effectiveness, improve efficiency, and optimize costs.  We wrote the book on organizational change in IT.  For more information about our Change Adoption Workshop, vision and strategy development, or other services, contact us at info@adoptitsm.com or by calling 520-591-2427.
0 Comments

    Archives

    February 2020
    January 2019
    April 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Agility
    Assessment
    BRM
    Business Relationship Management
    Business Relationship Manager
    Certification
    Change Adoption
    Change Fatigue
    COBIT
    Communication
    Continual Service Improvement
    CSI
    Culture
    Customer Experience
    Design Thinking
    DevOps
    Emotional Intelligence
    Engagement
    Governance
    Innovation
    Interactive Learning
    ITIL
    IT Service Management
    ITSM
    Leadership
    Management Of Portfolios
    Metrics
    Organizational Change
    Phoenix Project
    Process
    Program Management
    Self Awareness
    Simulation
    Transformation
    Value Of Best Practice

    RSS Feed

    Visit the 
    ​News and Events Archive

Contact us:  520-591-2427                                                                                                                                                                                                  Copyright 2023 USS

  • Home
  • About
  • Innovation
  • Organizational Change
  • Workshops & Simulations
  • Contact