Governance in the Digital Era: Building a Successful Business Transformation Strategy

Governance in transformation is a journey of big bets and options; it anticipates confidence in the next step may only be possible once the first step is taken.

Amongst all the components of a business transformation strategy and plan, perhaps the least appreciated and the most misunderstood is the methodology of strategic governance. At the very least, governance should contain the structures, processes, and mechanisms needed to steer the organization through significant changes to the business model and related operational and organizational systems.

Transformation Governance

Governance in transformation assumes the organization is managing a growth strategy where frontier technology will be harnessed to enable new value creation and productivity. People - augmented with new capabilities and empowered to innovate - adapt to and create new ways of working, embrace new behaviors and mindsets, and bring human ingenuity into an automated enterprise. Governance is the “how” to the “what” in the emerging operating model, together with its stakeholders, initiatives, and roadmap. It brings the needed methodology, policies, structures, change, and communications for a workplace and workforce in transition.

Governance runs a strategy that is in equal parts operational execution and people readiness, with a constant focus on building the workplace and workforce of the future.

 Here are some common components one could expect to find in a transformation-related Governance Program:

The System of Governance

With transformation as its backdrop and a growth strategy and emerging operating model as its reference point, governance factors and then organizes and manages a system of critical, interdependent moving parts. It ensures that important questions are answered within the work of transformation. For example:

• Are key initiatives prioritized in our overall strategy and roadmap?
• Do we have sufficient cross-organizational enablement and control in place to govern transformation?
• What is the relationship of technology investments to business capabilities needed, and have our operational models been built to maximize these investments?
• How has transition planning for the workforce been aligned with our strategy and plans?
• Are cross-functional capabilities and new work practices harmonized across the business where value is leverageable or processes are dependent?
• What behaviors hold up the model, bind the organization, and calm people through unsettling times, ensuring the transformation’s sustainability?

Governance manages the disruption to the organization and its people by helping to build the new cadences, systems, and structures needed for the business to succeed. Capabilities such as innovation, resiliency, agility, optionality, and incrementalism must be built into the model by design. Governance in transformation is a journey of big bets and options; it anticipates confidence that the next step may only be possible once the first step is taken. Critically, it readies workers and leaders to fly by new instruments while building new models for collaboration among peers that are made achievable only when robust dialogue can challenge assumptions, change minds, and lead views to evolve.