Every business is facing challenges today that are testing them at all levels of the organization. As we enter the fifth month of the coronavirus global pandemic, we thought it was time to take a step back and reflect on what has already been learned to help us all benefit. So we hosted a virtual summit last week to do just that—explore how businesses are embracing change and focusing on how to come out of this pandemic stronger.
During the Embrace Uncertainty virtual summit, results from a June 2020 global business survey highlighted a shift in business priorities since the start of the pandemic, with these key areas increasing in priority:
- Accelerating the shift to digital business
- Reducing costs
- Improving the use of data insights in business decision making
- Responding faster to business and market changes
- Improving our ability to innovate
Throughout the summit, our speakers shared numerous ways they’re already addressing these priorities along with the following insights that really resonated with the attendees:
1. Disruption in the 2020’s will be driven by uncertainty and met by adaptability. Every business needs to be “future fit” and develop a customer-obsessed operating model that’s enabled by technology to help them thrive. Our guest speaker, Brian Hopkins from Forrester, provided a framework for how to develop an effective model to address continuous change including how to be more adaptive, resilient, and creative.
2. The benefits of creating a centralized operational community. When change is perpetual, operating cycles also have to be continuous to proactively manage risk, increase accountability, and re-align resources when necessary. Consolidating systems to eliminate silos immediately increases visibility across all workstreams, and all stakeholders (including customers, partners, and vendors), to facilitate a more proactive, insight-driven decision making process. You’ll quickly reap the benefits of being able to spend time acting on the data insights instead of spending time collecting the data and worrying about data discrepancies. This transformative approach allows you to draw value from your entire ecosystem—maximizing the impact of every business cycle.
3. One size doesn’t fit all. Templates and best practices are great when you’re getting started, but what happens when you start to “outgrow” them? Or you need to quickly adapt to increase your productivity, keep your teams aligned, and deliver results faster? Your work processes need to serve every individual—as well as your entire ecosystem—to ensure you’re able to capture the data you need to make strategic decisions. And these processes need to be able to evolve as you adapt to business changes. The key to success is to start small; take a systematic approach to how each team works and right-size your practices to match the effort and complexity involved.
4. Change management is really about emotions. Digital transformation is more about people and their behavior than technology. How you craft the story about why the change is needed is important, but how you deliver the story is crucial
We’re excited to share the entire Embrace Uncertainty virtual summit on demand, so you can watch the sessions whenever you have time. We hope you’ll be just as inspired as we were by these speakers and you’ll gain insights into new ways to transform the way you work to not just do things differently, but to ultimately make a greater impact on your business.
