Gartner’s Lily Mok explains why your organization needs to redesign talent strategies to transform its information and technology business model.
An information and technology business model reflects how a company orchestrates its I&T capabilities to achieve strategic business goals. Traditionally, only the IT organization has played a material role in managing information and technology, but IT activities are increasingly driven outside of IT.
Many organizations currently have I&T governance models that focus on efficiency, but this approach will not deliver the innovation and agility required by today’s digital operations. I&T capabilities must be distributed across the enterprise and deployed collectively to successfully execute the digital business strategy.
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Radical changes in IT and business roles, skills and competencies are required for a successful transformation of the I&T business mode. Yet talent remains one of the Top Challenges for CIOs in shifting business models to align with the digital business ambition. Here are four steps CIOs must take to redesign talent strategies and optimize workforce capabilities to support the transformation of the I&T business model.
Shape roles and talent profiles around digital business ambitions
As the company shifts its strategic focus and advances the contribution of I&T through business model transformation, CIOs and business leaders must understand the key talent attributes required. I&T roles must evolve based on business model patterns to deliver the desired business outcomes.
For example, companies that switch from a service-optimizing model to a value-optimizing model need to set up a product-oriented I&T organizational structure. This structure should have a strategic focus on driving business value optimization by leveraging I&T capabilities for continuous growth and innovation in digital products and services. New roles are needed to explore business growth opportunities and exploit I&T opportunities for differentiation and innovation. These include data scientist, product manager, platform manager, program manager, customer experience designer, social scientist and venture capitalist.
The transition from asset optimization to invention optimization requires increasingly high levels of IT maturity. However, the best business model pattern for an enterprise is not determined by IT maturity, but by how well the desired pattern aligns with business objectives. Based on the pattern of the targeted I&T business model that aligns with the organization’s digital business aspiration, CIOs must develop a plan to close key role gaps and desired talent profiles to progress toward the target model.
Change mindset and behavior to accelerate transformation
New business models for I&T require new ways of working, such as adopting agile and enabling multidisciplinary, fusion teams to collaborate between business and IT. The desire for agility, speed and innovation requires a shift from an inside-out, IT-centric, fixed mindset to an outside-in, business-focused growth mindset.
That’s why it’s more important than ever for CIOs to shift focus to equipping employees with the ability to embrace change and apply technologies in new ways to drive competitive advantage. CIOs must define the competencies for each role that are required for the desired pattern of the I&T business model. Pay specific attention to developing a growth mindset along with cultivating adaptability, digital agility, business acumen, design thinking and innovation competencies. These competencies help I&T professionals combine technology expertise with business and customer insights to deliver innovative new business and customer value at scale.
Consider non-traditional approaches to talent
Shifting the strategic focus of IT from back office to front office poses major challenges to the long-held assumptions of talent management.
Traditionally, IT uses standard corporate recruiting channels and processes for IT recruiting and formal training for talent upskilling and reskilling to meet evolving business needs. While these approaches are suitable for asset- and process-optimizing I&T business model patterns, they are no longer suitable for value- and invention-optimizing patterns that focus on adaptability, agility, and speed.
CIOs increasingly need to adopt a non-traditional approach to meet the diverse and dynamically changing needs of digital businesses, including:
- Build future talent pipelines through strategic alliances with academic and non-traditional education programs.
- Extensive use of technologies (such as workforce analytics, AI, and gamification) to identify and develop talent.
- Leveraging digital talent ecosystems to hire expertise and fill gaps (e.g. crowdsourcing and gig work).
- Applying Agile learning, combining experiential learning on the job with mentoring and personalised, just-in-time micro-learning and knowledge sharing.
- Making robots and AI part of the talent landscape to optimize performance and business results.
CIOs must establish an open and collaborative partnership with HR to meet the enterprise’s rapidly evolving talent requirements. Develop a strategy and roadmap to reconfigure talent to enable execution of targeted I&T business model patterns. Prepare for upcoming changes in the workplace by assessing how the future of work scenarios will affect the way people work, roles people are likely to have, and workforce models. Identify and evaluate technologies that enable HR to reinvent talent management, and offer to use IT as a breeding ground for new, innovative approaches.
Share learning to cultivate talent and scale I&T capabilities
Enterprises cannot unlock the business value of technology without people. It’s more important than ever to cultivate digital agility as an enterprise-wide competency beyond IT. To move forward in tackling the perennial challenge of the I&T skills gap, CIOs can play the role of champions in fostering a culture of continuous learning and making developing I&T talent a top priority across the enterprise.
To move to more collaborative, flexible, innovative and creative ways of working, employees across the enterprise must demonstrate the competencies to master technology and embrace new ways of working. To truly make talent a factor in the transformation of the I&T business model, CIOs must work with HR to design and implement continuous learning programs focused on future-proofing the workforce.
Lily Mok is a VP Analyst at Gartner, Inc. that covers strategic workforce planning, IT job architecture and career paths, digital leadership, and more. Lily and other Gartner analysts will provide additional insights on IT talent strategies and other key topics for CIOs at: Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2022taking place October 17-20 in Orlando, Florida.
