Strategy & Organisational Change
banking, and wealth management. Each platform mapped onto a certain business function and was co-led by heads of business and technology. These owners had a set of shared platform objectives which included business, customer, and technical outcomes. Co-ownership of these objectives was key. This became truly transformational in how the business and technology teams learned to operate as real partners over time. DBS also developed a balanced scorecard that integrated technology and business strategy. This focused 40 per cent on traditional financial performance. It also focused 20 per cent on digital outcomes, including digital revenue, digital customer engagement, and customer journey targets. The final 40 per cent focused on the bank’s digital transformation and other business goals. These targets applied to all senior leaders were cascaded down several levels in the organisation, tightly coupling the outcomes of each platform to the bank’s mission. 3 Develop ambidextrous leaders. It is crucial to maintain the focus on integrating the business and technology capabilities and developing ambidextrous leaders who can appreciate and operate with both domains. Otherwise, natural behaviour will tend to separate business and technology functions into specialised domains again over time. Develop a management system that can drive the culture of integration, so it becomes second nature to the organisation. This can be done through a regular cadence of objective setting, quarterly business reviews, performance goals, platform alignment, training, and corporate communications.
For example, NASA has adopted an implementation process that includes the creation and integration of digital transformation roadmaps in different parts of the agency. Alongside this, it funds ‘catalyst projects’ to address barriers to implementation and measures progress over time to help maintain focus. Following these three principles can help an organisation beat the dismal odds to achieve successful digital transformation. Over time, this will help to create an organisation that can operate at the speed of technology. These lessons may also apply to other forms of organisational transformation, especially if employees need to develop new competencies. For example, organisations that aim to develop cutting-edge innovation competences have to maintain and sharpen their in-house creative DNA across functions. Innovators should appreciate the broader business imperatives. Meanwhile, business leaders should appreciate the potential of new creations. This can be hard to achieve, especially in organisations where specialisation comes naturally. It requires ambidextrous mindsets to overcome the usual bias towards tradition and focusing on existing businesses. Constantly reinforcing these mindsets through role modelling, management systems, and values can help to ensure that transformation succeeds.
for missions on the open market. However, it also invests significantly in its own native digital technology capabilities to optimise and align operations and conducts research projects to learn from external best practice. Alongside these, it runs leadership development programmes to ensure that technologists acquire management capabilities and managers understand more about the potential of technology. 2 Set common objectives. Firms should set joint objectives for technology and business leaders by developing company-wide metrics that apply equally to both. This is the most under-appreciated aspect of digital transformation and is tricky to accomplish. The forces of tradition, routine, and habit operate so that business leaders naturally focus on business outcomes. Technology leaders, on the other hand, focus on technology outcomes. DBS Bank accomplished a digital transformation process that helped it move from a slow-moving, bricks- and-mortar bank to one of the world’s leading digital banks. It did so by creating 30 separate ‘platforms’. These included consumer banking, institutional
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Sustainable Development Goals
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