Buckle up for Turbo Digitalization

This ain’t your Daddy’s IT anymore, Dude!

This ain’t your Daddy’s IT anymore, Dude!

Buckle up for Turbo Digitalization

Imagine the global corona lockdown happened Before Computers’. In BC we had no wifi, no laptops, no mobile apps. Most of us born BC can still remember. My kids seriously ask themselves how we survived without these marvels of technology.

With the perfect storm in digital innovation, we have the opportunity to make our world a better place: greener, healthier, and more inclusive. In the eye of the storm, captains of industry have three options: back to normal (whatever that may be), innovate our way out of trouble, or slowly go bust. The corona crisis shows that we are a resilient, adaptive, and creative species. This mindset also applies to large organizations. It’s impressive how elephants with alleged arthritis suddenly can dance like Fred Astaire (a BC dude). When the going gets tough, the tough gets going: no red tape, no naysayers, no lawyering up.

Hopefully, we can keep that Corona mentality when we move into the age of turbo digitalization’. That means we have to let go of the way we source and govern IT. Enterprise IT is complicated with zillions of systems. The status quo, according to (another BC dude) former US President Ronald Reagan, is Latin for the mess we’re in.”

Status quo in IT is a gift that keeps on giving a headache. Legacy is not just technical debt. It’s foremost a mindset. It’s the equivalent of a collateralized debt obligation during the financial crisis in 2008: dogshit wrapped in catshit”. Too many admins, architects, purchasers, testers, and others in IT are, unintentional, throwing disruptive change and radical simplicity under the bus. Many IT vendors still make tons of money defending the status quo. Can’t, won’t, don’t’ is a state of mind. Sure, we need rules. But we have too many rules based on distrust and control mania. I don’t know is the most difficult sentence for executives. We know why we have to change, but not how. We still force-feed KPIs and use statements of work (SOW) that are toxic for collaboration, co-creation, and common goals. We don’t need a sea of processes, but a unified problem to hack our minds. We need to understand the bigger picture: a purpose that makes us proud, fueling the will to win. The formula of success is skill + will = thrill’.

We seek creativity in technology development and solution design. Creative people color outside the lines, take risks, make mistakes, sometimes miss deadlines, and dream big. They fail, learn, win, and celebrate. The perfect way to kill creativity is to force people to color inside the lines: meet SLAs, hit KPIs, stay within all the boundaries stated in the SOW. We need boundaries, but with rules so tight, you probably end up with a clusterfuck in digital transformation.

Many enterprises already had to pull the plug on gigantic IT projects, that should have been their salvation in the digital transformation. They dream small and start big with digital agencies and prestigious consultancy firms. CRM can take ages when you start a debate on the perfect data model. Dream big, start small, show value. Heineken started the connected brewery program, a digital twin for real-time design plant simulation. Showing rational compassion for the plant operators (blue-collar workers are key-stakeholders), relentless curiosity, and deep expertise in IoT, programmable logic controllers, and AWS, paved the way to the first show me the value!’ cases.

Outcome-first is the modus operandi: happy operators, brewing a better world and moving the needle in the supply chain. Heineken cut its own red tape. Operators are now able to develop their own apps to improve processes and enable water and energy savings. The most important takeaway? I was not managed like a traditional Big IT’ project.

This ain’t your Daddy’s IT anymore, Dude!

Marco Gianotten is founder of GIARTE — At Giarte, we firmly believe IT isn’t about bits and bytes. It’s about people. We design the tools and insights to reveal the human experience in tech.