VMware Inc.

01/26/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/26/2022 02:20

Inspire Organizational Change to Achieve Modern Agility

In March of 2020, organizations faced a massive shift. Almost overnight, entire operations were forced to go remote. Today, that trend continues. Ninety-two percent of respondents to the study "The Virtual Floorplan: New Rules for the New Era of Work " report at least some of their employees work remotely, which is only a 2% decrease from work-from-home poll results taken at the height of the pandemic.

Successful organizations not only transformed and adapted: they maintained service-level agreements (SLAs) and, in some cases, even improved their service offerings. Now, as parts of the world return to normal, customers are expecting organizations to continue innovating at the same pace they did in the early part of the pandemic.

I'm not sure what that future looks like. I'm not sure the industry knows, either. IT hasn't identified its ready stance - the positioning that allows organizations to adapt to new and ongoing disruption. One thing I know for sure is that organizations were successful at the beginning of the pandemic due to Herculean efforts; however, that frenetic pace isn't sustainable. To meet the challenges of the future, we need to enable a high level of agility, so that every day is less of a superhuman feat and more business as usual.

Change the corporate culture and get buy in from all levels

At the heart of every massive change are people. Real transformation requires execs and business leaders who can inspire change at all levels of their organizations. Change of this magnitude starts at the top.

I spoke with Datev's Senior Cloud Platform Engineer, Juergen Sussner, as well as the company's CTO, Dr. Christian Bäer, about their experience leading organizational change. "In Germany, we call it 'to take the people with you,'" Bäer told me.

It's important for executives to tell the company, "We have to change, and we need you - the employees - to find the right way."

Sussner discussed how he addressed the developers responsible for technological change. "My role is about getting out of developers' way," he said. "I want to empower the developers … to develop software and to deliver software to the customers at their speed, without any obstacles in their way."

Though these motivational truths may be self-evident, Sussner also revealed a challenge the leadership team encountered. "We had developers on our side. But what we realized, maybe too late, was that we maybe missed middle management. [Datev has] 8,500 employees and you can't change 8,500 employees within a month or day. It needs time and you to realize that everyone in this company needs their own time to adapt to the change."

Why do people need time to adapt to change? Because change can be unsettling. Large-scale changes, Sussner told me, can be a challenge because you "have to handle a lot of fear." His comment about the emotional toll of massive change reminds me that, above all, technology leaders must learn to be vulnerable.

This openness and vulnerability, both as a business partner and as a human being, is the only way to get everyone on board - especially as we emerge from the years we've had. We need to listen to people's needs, overcommunicate about the company's goals, and keep focus on the human side of organizational change.

Modern IT environments require different technologies

Thriving during uncertainty requires solid teams of people who are supported by the very best modern IT. For example, multi-cloud infrastructures underpin remote workforces and allow teams to better address customer requirements. According to the VMware survey, nearly three-quarters of large enterprises are now deploying multi-cloud environments.

Jeff Shaw, CEO and EVP of EMPLOYERS, realized the importance of modern IT in facilitating change. "A multi-cloud environment allows our IT team to support the nimble development of valuable new products and services for our agents and customers," he said.

These infrastructures also enable cloud-native apps. Cloud-native apps are designed for faster, more frequent updates in concert with changing market dynamics.

According to the VMware survey, to support the new environments and other challenges that arose in 2020, 68% of developers plan to increase their use of modern app frameworks.

Cloud-native apps are built differently from their monolithic predecessors, as Biswabrata Chakravorty, CIO IndusInd Bank, noted. "We continue to reimagine the building blocks of the business as a micro-service 'factory.' Digital workloads are increasingly being refactored or rehosted on this framework." Bäer further explained the benefits of this approach. "By slicing the applications down to small modules, we can react in a few weeks, not a few months."

Fundamentally, agile software development principles, such as cloud-native apps, rest on the assumption of incremental, iterative progress and fast failing. This agile way of conducting business and innovating requires a culture that supports quick failure and quick decision making.

Don't feel paralyzed by new processes

Because of the inherent fear that so often accompanies change - and because it's challenging to revamp processes that have worked for years - some leaders become mired in "analysis paralysis." To avoid this, Sussner recommends a quick fix: "Just start."

"It's better doing a wrong decision than doing no decision," Sussner continued.

"You have to be open to try out new things and you have to be brave in trying things out and doing things, even if you don't know where they might end." 

Even though a team's action may lead to failure, at least they're well on their way to improving. Determining what doesn't work is key to figuring out what ultimately will.

Bäer emphasized something that we may instinctively understand (but which still requires constant reinforcement). "Customers must be at the beginning and end of everything you do." He also offered poignant insight about why so many companies struggled during 2020 and why we all suddenly needed so much change.

"I think technology is the reason why we got to the problem at all," he said. Companies make technological changes, but don't always understand why, or to what end. But "customers don't care about on-premises, cloud. They care about more value, more security."

I'll leave you something that became more apparent the longer I spoke with customers. Don't go it alone. There is a whole ecosystem of partners out there who have probably solved a lot of the problems you're encountering. Companies like Datev and people like Bäer and Sussner can offer sound advice - grounded in their own experiences.

Today's agile "business as usual" requires the right culture, technology and processes

As we craft IT's "ready stance," it's clear that it must provide the agility and responsiveness needed to adapt to disruptions and new business requirements. Achieving these goals requires massive changes in how we think, in the technology we use, and in our day-to-day processes.

As Bäer suggested, business leaders must realize what needs to change and then quickly pivot in response. Above all, leaders should keep asking questions and talking to others. That's what I'll continue to do. Identifying IT's ready position will require the entire industry to work together.