People – your talent – your team members – are THE most critical part of any business or technology transformation. Yet, it is almost bizarre to think that this particular enabler is most overlooked or deprioritized compared to the more “sexier” technologies or related buzz words.
People are a big part of the digital transformation success. They can make or break your efforts. Many companies start off with a Chief Digital Office role – a senior business-technologist who can oversee this multi-year transformation and be the executive sponsor. This role generally reports into the CEO. Digital transformation also involves involving in different roles like full-stack developer, cloud architect, data architect, data engineers, data scientists, DevOps, etc.
The business-technology operating model product-centric team also needs addition of Product Owners and Product Managers if not already present in the organization. It is safe to assume addition of tens to couple of hundreds of resources to focus on digital transformation to supplement the current head count as need to keep the current initiatives running in addition to embarking on the path of digital transformation is needed.
This will drive the need to the right sourcing and location strategies. How much of this needs to be a ramp up of internal hiring vs. getting in 3rd party staffing to manage the quick ramp up needed for transformation and the gradual ramp down when the major migrations/transformations are done, and company starts moving to steady state. With these staffing decisions, there is a need to have a location or site strategy. Does everybody need to be onsite, onshore, nearshore, offshore, etc. Generally, a hybrid model that allows enough overlap for coordination and collaboration is most widely preferred and adopted.
It is also important to take the team on the journey of transformation along the maturity curve otherwise it will result in reverting back to old behaviors and processes – this creates a need for change management and effective communication plan and channels. Sharing progress of transformation through townhalls, newsletters, other formal and informal communication channels keeps the teams engaged and energized.
Rewards and Recognitions tied to successes can also prove to be great motivators. Breaking down big blocks of work into small meaningful chunks allows to celebrate small wins along the way. Starting with small wins can help get buy-ins from leaders and teams and can provide momentum to continue to the next phases. It also helps secure more sponsorship for future phases of transformation and secure funding.
As the company transforms, it needs to pay special attention to make sure the internal team members, who will take on new or upgraded roles in the new world are equipped and ready to take them on. For example, taking a database administrator who has spent ten years working with a relational database and asking her/him to suddenly design, build. and support a NoSQL database in cloud is a recipe for disaster. Instead, ensure that their skills are upgraded through training, provide staging environment for them to learn and test technologies and tools that you are migrating to. In short, invest in them.
Beyond a point, money is not the major driver of talent retention. People want to be part of the journey, they want to feel invested in, empowered – the more the company reveals the personal and human side of things, shows sensitivity in the right areas with the employees, provides avenues for personal and professional growth of its employees, the more commitment, excellence, and loyalty they will get from their talent. After all, if you cannot understand your employee, then you cannot understand your customers – at the end of the day rightfully so, it is all about people.