With the changing landscape of software as a service, it is important now more than ever to eliminate silos and develop cross-functional teams/collaboration. I recently interviewed Barry Robinson, Senior Director of Enterprise Programs at GGP Retail REIT, to discuss how committing to IT change management principles helps organizations get full value from their business process applications and investments. IT becomes a business process enablement partner, not just a technology provider.
In his 2005 interview by InfoWorld based on his selection as one of the Top 25 CTO’s of the year, he stated that “you need to use the technology as a means to an end, not an end in itself.” This statement still rings true today.
Read our conversation below.
You said you’ve come to realize, “effective planning of adoption and change management is more important than technical implementation considerations.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?
I’ve had a long career in IT. It used to be that IT would spend a long time working with the users to collect requirements and develop the solutions. When the solution was deployed, we’d leave it to the business to make the process changes required to take advantage of the system. With such custom solutions, we tried to get as close as possible to the business requirements from an implementation or capability point of view. Nowadays, there are more off the shelf, cloud-based solutions that enable more rapid delivery of solutions with consumer features and capabilities that users have come to expect from technology.
Are there any challenges you run into when dealing with these off the shelf solutions?
The off the shelf solutions, though great in many ways, may actually have more features than are required to deliver the planned business process changes. In these instances, we introduce a minimally viable product, work closely with the business to identify process improvement opportunities, and enhance the solution over time. By enabling users to interact with the new capabilities they will identify improvement opportunities that were not originally envisioned for the solution. Over time, the business will become the leaders in identifying the new features within the solution and defining the internal changes to take full advantage of these new capabilities.
How is that hurting the business/business users?
Without an effective plan for adoption and change management, very few organizations realize full value from their investment. For example, in one of my past consultant roles, we were often approached by clients who said, “We’ve invested significantly in these solutions, but we’re not realizing the benefits from the investments. What are we missing?”
Through a series of interviews, we realized that clients hadn’t properly planned the necessary business changes required to take advantage of the new capabilities. On a go-forward basis we ensured that new solutions included considerations of adoption and change management, both by assessing the readiness of the organization to change and by making sure that they had the right level of engagement, stakeholder support, and communication planning. It was also important to establish utilization measurements to ensure that the business could identify the benefit that was delivered by the solution. With all of this in place, the benefits of the solution become very measurable and real rather than anecdotal.
Is there anything else about off the shelf solutions that has posed new challenges/opportunities?
Yes - integrating across multiple solutions. Now, there typically tends to be a lot of integrated solutions deployed in organizations, whereas there used to be a lot more point solutions that were focused on solving very specific business problems. This is a huge opportunity to leverage solutions in multiple business departments, but it also makes it that much more important to apply an intentional change management process to include all the business users and stakeholders.
How do these evolved needs and solutions change the nature of the IT team?
I am now on more of a hybrid team. We are developing solutions that enable the organization to realize value from their information assets and we are improving internal collaboration every day. I am on the IT team, but my stakeholders are typically the Executive Leadership in the organization. For example, I can be working with an SVP of HR, an SVP of Legal, or an SVP of Finance and their direct reports to identify results they are trying to achieve in their workforce. By having visibility to opportunities across multiple departments we are able to identify common usage patterns and common user requirements. A structured process of review enables the identification of common user characteristics, called personas, and common use cases, called scenarios across multiple departments. The ability to conduct meaningful persona and scenario planning and incorporate it into the change management plan is one of the ways that every IT team will need to operate.
Do you have a communication strategy to collaborate more effectively?
Consistency is key in communication. We try to make it so the communication comes from the business stakeholders. IT’s role nowadays is enablement. We partner with the heads of the business units to develop the communication plan and set the framework, and then IT delivers the nexus, i.e., “here’s how we are going to execute on that.”
What are some growing pains one can expect when trying to influence such a cultural shift?
You must promote the idea within IT that we should embrace and engage with the business in a new way. It also requires the business to see IT as a business process enablement partner, not just a technology provider. We are there helping solve their real-world business problems from inception right through delivery. By trying to get familiar with the business units earlier, we can help frame the guidance within the context of what a digital solution looks like in an organization. Taking time to build those stakeholder relationships and help get them to understand what some of that messaging is and what some of the potentials are in the organization is key.
That sounds like an admirable goal, but how do you do it?
I spend an awful lot of time with my team reinforcing this way of thinking. I’ve sent them to outside training and brought in people that can help identify where it’s been successful; helping them develop in their career and challenging them to think differently about the future role of IT. It requires a large investment of time with the people that are helping you deliver these solutions.
What outside training have you used?
There’s a methodology called, Prosci, which is an adoption change management methodology. When I was at a previous technology firm, it was embraced heavily and leveraged across all consultants. I liked the model and brought it to my current team.
Training and dedicating time to your existing team is important. Is there anything you do differently now to expand your team?
Recruiting people with strong customer focus is key. I always look for intellectually curious people that want to continue developing their career and are comfortable in thinking about how things might be done differently. We also expanded coverage in our team to have more agile business analysis expertise to enable the development of solutions within a hybrid agile framework.
What advice could you give more junior IT people in terms of how they need to switch their mindset for the future?
There are several major focuses where IT must be very strong and consistent in how we execute. I put information classification and information protection at the top of the list because you need to establish those disciplines whether the information be on premise or in the cloud. I also put identity and access management at the top of the list, so that you know who your users are, how you provision them for their respective roles, and what services, applications and content they have permission to access.
Vendor management and stakeholder management is critical. IT teams must deal with people outside of their organizations to make sure they’re delivering solutions to a level that they are confident will deliver results within their business. IT teams need to manage internal stakeholder expectations as well.
Finally, I would put project management and business analysis as key strengths. As you think about IT services becoming more commodity based and you seek to leverage more cloud services, those are the pillars that are important regardless of who’s delivering the service.
Are there any last words of wisdom you would like to leave us with?
Some may think it is a time-worn cliché that business and IT are not aligned, but I think there is still work to do in most organizations. Trust must be built, earned, and nurtured. I don’t know that IT has always delivered in the past and there’s still a lot of shadow IT.
Nowadays, cloud-based services create opportunities for IT teams to work with business users in new ways. You must get alignment in the things I talked about earlier, the information, classification, protection, identity and access management. If you’re not aligned with the business, you’re going to have disparate solutions, which create new risks for the organization and don’t integrate to make the users’ world any better. A well-integrated solution will be achieved when IT and the business establish trust and a shared vision, ultimately making the organization a lot more successful.
