Digital Business; teaming a ‘Digital’ Leader with a ‘Business Manager’
Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research
Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems.
Coverage Areas
Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD,
Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use
Previous experience:
Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...
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If there is one constant headache for any enterprise it is finding the right staff, and there is no place where this is harder than in the new skills for Digital Business. And right at the top of the list is finding the right person to head up and grow your new Digital Business to reach the ambitious goals that the board has set, and probably created financial market expectation around. There is plenty of advice on what these extraordinarily rare and gifted people should do, but is this really enough to guarantee success in finding and ongoing operations?
Somewhat amazingly there seems to be little comment on how such a complex new role is likely to introduce a very different personality into the senior management team with the resulting misunderstandings and friction.
Almost invariably any senior management team is comprised of people with a fairly common background that allows them to function as a team around common understanding of important management issues. Equally it is likely that due to the time to gain experience to merit their senior roles their age grouping will not lead them to be confident ‘technologists’. Though many will argue that they have mastered the use of Business IT well enough, and at home they will use a Tablet etc., that’s rarely enough for them to be considered as the kind of ‘digital native’ required to be able to get to grips with the detail of working with their new Digital Business team.
It’s difficult to manage what you don’t understand, that’s why there are experts leading the various aspects of the business, but the management issues are answered by the common operational management reporting mechanisms. It’s the oft-quoted variant of the phrase ‘if you can measure it, then you can manage it’. However this is a, dangerous liability when the ‘it’ refers to Digital Business as my previous blog ‘Digital Business; Mastering the Financials’ pointed out.
The Enterprise needs a ‘leader’ to show it where and how, it should proceed to establish its Digital Business operations, sadly the more ‘digital savvy’ this new leader is then the less they are likely to talk the same language as the rest of the management team.
It’s not hard to see the gap, or difference, between the senior management teams profiles and that of a so called Digital Native, but lets really focus on the key issue to address before addressing a proposed a solution. The last twenty-five years has placed a great emphasis on operational management using technology to automate back office operational processes to cut cost and improve efficiency. The goal was to cut out wasteful diversity, focus on the optimal process, and above all to create good quality reporting that allowed micro management to continue to wring ever further improvement. Gentlemen and Ladies of the Board and Senior Management you have done well, very well, and today you have a collective understanding that allows you to operate huge enterprises to remarkable levels of operational efficiency.
BUT, and it’s a big but! The definitions used for Digital Business seems to almost be the antithesis of the current business operational model as a list of popular descriptive terms for a Digital Business model would usually include Disruptive, Agile, Flexible, and Market Reactive. The operational terms would include social, real time, viral, interactive, again, all different to the current experiences. Profiles of highly proficient people who are a) deeply involved in social technology, b) quick to recognize, or even create, disruptive change, c) able to recruit, develop and lead a Digital team, and d) are entrepreneurial initiative graspers, don’t generally show operational management skills.
The clash with the existing management team is an obvious and serious risk as literally you won’t talk the same language, be motivated by the same issues, as well as being different personality profiles! That’s all before considering the commercial management and ongoing operational management reporting capabilities and understandings!
Of course there are some people with both sets of skills, a CIO who has added to their skills, or a marketing head that has similarly adopted social technology, are both common backgrounds for the new Chief Digital Officer role. But it’s a tough role to both organize and operate a business unit as a board level-reporting unit working in an entirely new discipline based on constantly changing markets and technologies. Try writing out the role definition and skill requirements as bullets for a recruiter, and then add internal reporting responsibilities to get the point.
Given the growing number of vacancies for Digital Business leaders of various types is growing fast, and the numbers of really well qualified people is low, and likely to remain so, there has to be an alternative answer.
Intel when faced with extremely rapid growth and new markets some ten, or more years ago, used to describe their management style as ‘Two in the Box’, meaning in their case the experienced leader would manage with their likely replacement in duopoly slowly taking responsibilities. This management measure ensured the constant availability of skilled managers by developing promising ‘industry specialists’ through adding enterprise operational management skills. (More recently Cognizant apparently trademarked the term to apply to their practice of a manager on the client site managing the client’s business in a duopoly with a manager off site based at Cognizant.)
Its seems the time has come to reconsider the ‘two in a box’ management principle for managing the complex hybrid of Digital Business by teaming a ‘Digital’ leader with a trusted experienced ‘Business’ manager.
The principle is obvious, and instantly recognizable for its possible advantages, but the first reality is of course how to make sure that the ‘two in a box’ managers can function as a genuine team. This is where the work of Dr. Janice Presser, a fellow member of the Constellation team, introduces ‘teamability’, a term that means exactly what it says. Unlike traditional measures like IQ, aptitudes, and personality traits, it uses completely new technology engineered to identify and organize teaming behaviors. As a result, it produces measurable business benefits. All of us at Constellation have been individually, and collectively, surprised at the accuracy with which Dr. Janice’s Teamability® technology can define the way we make our specific team contributions. More importantly perhaps, the technology identifies those with whom we can work most collaboratively and productively.
Teamability adds a new defining element to knowledge, skills, and experience. The ‘two in the box’ managers can then be selected for their excellent alignment to the team’s needs. The pair should find it relatively easy to take the board’s definitions of the role and responsibility of the ideal CDO, and decide how to split the responsibilities and accountabilities.
It’s right to define Digital Business as requiring ‘hybrid skills’, so why not recognize the truth and for a new generation of Business and Technology develop ‘Hybrid Management’ by reinventing ‘Two in the Box’ management supported and enabled by Teamability, the new technology of teaming.
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