Insights

Bringing digital into the heart of our organizations

Wed 11 Feb 2015

“To support change our approach is to count on individual initiative and motivation, collective intelligence and adaptability.”

Does digital impose structural changes on enterprises?

R. S. Digital technologies are radically changing our lives and engendering a societal phenomenon that finds its way into the workplace too. Whether small, mid-size or large, all companies are now impacted and their traditional bases are called into question: hierarchy, management, organization and working methods. Enterprises are constrained to follow the movement driven by customers and their own staff. It’s change or die! But how? The answers are not yet written in stone, but one thing is certain: they cannot avoid rethinking their organization.


How can enterprises adapt?

P. V. Digital obliges enterprises to be more attentive to their environment and to adapt unceasingly. Their operating modes are the most important aspect, even more than their market vision and action plans. It is rather like the training of a topnotch athlete: he works to create the conditions for success, the ability to react with strength and clear judgment. Digital necessitates greater reactivity in a fast-moving ecosystem; uncertainty must be exploited as an ally; agile mode operation is vital to be able to pivot with this ecosystem. The right to make mistakes must be recognized in order to ensure continuous progress and not to discourage initiative.


What are the fundamentals of the digital-driven transformation?

R. S. Digital tools facilitate remote and networked collaboration; they improve transversality, develop groupworking and allow close interaction with players outside the enterprise in increasingly complex ecosystems. These new tools can even underpin innovations able to enrich the customer experience. Having said that, and without denying their importance, digital services are of secondary importance in the groundswell of change. The fundamentals remain unchanged, even unchangeable: adhesion to a common project, sharing of common values, full commitment of the personnel, careful distribution of resources, and the ability to control complex, dynamic environments.
P. V. The cohesion of participants also requires active and open communication to ensure that everyone supports the enterprise project and the way it is to be implemented. This is particularly true when working in extended enterprise mode: greater opening to adjacent ecosystems and partners, occasional use of external experts, and virtual collaboration through think tanks.


How should talent be organized in the Enterprise 2.0?

R. S. Many companies are betting on big data and digital technologies to transmute into an Enterprises 2.0. Our approach to supporting this transformation goes well beyond the actual digital tools: we work to efficiently organize talent; we encourage individual initiative and motivation, collective intelligence and adaptability. The role of the enterprise is to create the conditions that allow this individual initiative and creativity to express themselves and lead to innovations. This is where the keys to change lie.
P. V. It will be interesting of see how the “digital natives” of the 1980s, or the even younger “generation Z” of the 1990s, will overturn, in a positive way, our ways of working. No doubt by focusing on enterprise projects and stronger cooperation. Enterprises must find ways of seducing them, then holding them by creating attractive and dynamic working and technological environments.