Digital transformation and Cloud Initiatives are most often born and driven by executive leadership. At the highest level of any organization, there is often strong alignment on these strategic initiatives, or at a minimum, agreement to proceed with organizational transformation.
As organizations prepare for and execute against their transformational initiatives, issues will arise. It is imperative that support, alignment, and clear sponsorship at the executive level are present and accessible to those driving the supporting workstreams and keep the following considerations in mind:
Hold themselves publicly accountable for its success
Champion and lead by the example the cultural changes taking place
Make timely decisions to positively impact progress
Remove roadblocks to ensure consistent forward progress
Allocate resources (people, infrastructure, tooling, licensing, etc.) as needed
Remove stalemates to keep momentum and remove tension
Stay up to date, and course correct where nessisary
As an organization prepares to pursue a transformative initiative, alignment and sponsorship will have a direct and measurable impact. It is important to continually have open discussions to ensure the vision, strategy and execution have alignment across stakeholders. Consider the following points as you prepare for the transformation:
How do organizational stakeholders envision their overall, future Cloud position?
Are there broad understanding of what success looks?
Who will lead the organization through its strategic planning including goals, objectives, and actions?
How are decisions communicated? Is feedback welcomed and open?
How are success criteria for the cloud journey defined, and what are the specific and measurable KPIs to action against?
What are the measurements of success as defined by leadership, and do they correctly translate into KPIs that can be measured and managed?
How are strategic management processes documented, regularly analyzed, and improved?
Is this information gated, or made openly available to all individuals in the organization?
How does the current culture, and go-forward strategy align for long-term success of the organization during, and post transformation?
Does the organizational culture foster long-term transformational success?
