If you are like us, you will be spending the next two weeks tying up projects and working through a long task list. The most concrete references to 2017 may still be in your planning documents. Even so, now is a good time to sequence your 2017 activities, so that you maintain the momentum of your digital transformation as the year changes. To help you take stock, we have pulled together a few practical tools and techniques to set New Year priorities, make better decisions, and stress-test your transformation roadmap.
Two of the most effective tools to set priorities are diagnostic tests and health checks. They provide objective data for your current status and reveal the gaps you need to close to reach your objectives. Their standard structure means that multiple people across the business provide input, thereby creating a more balanced, honest view of progress.
In our experience, enterprise-wide transformation is really a collection of small, systematic actions that incrementally shift structure, practice, culture, and leadership. Our complimentary Quantified Organisation Diagnostic Test looks across these four areas of the adaptive organisation to help companies identify these small changes. You can take the test here to track the progress of your transformation and receive prioritised recommendations for how to improve.
If you have an Enterprise Social Network, then you have a good way to get more people involved in transformation. Yet we still find that most companies need to accelerate the adoption of these platforms if they are to achieve business improvement goals. Our experience teaches us that the key to sustainable adoption is work relevance. This requires moving beyond vanity metrics (likes, comments, etc.) to identify the strategic use cases that facilitate new ways of working. If you 2017 plans include improving the adoption of your ESN, then you may find value in our thoughts on how to use a health check to prioritise your efforts.
Below are a few other practical tools and pieces of advice that we have documented in order to help you set the priorities of your digital transformation efforts:
- ABC decisions is a technique for defining different levels of decision, where each level corresponds to a varying degree of involvement of others in the decision-making process.
- Tactical meeting process is a method for team members to regroup and remove any existing obstacles to moving forward.
- Transparent issue logging is a technique for surfacing issues in production or delivery in the open, so that issues can then be solved by the community.
- Appreciative Inquiry is a model for analysis, decision-making and the creation of strategic change, which works particular well among larger groups.
- Open Space is a technique for meetings whose purpose is to explore certain challenges and gather diverse opinions about them.