Digital Transformation: Creating the Strategic Direction and Momentum
Context
De Montfort University (DMU) is a respected academic institution with around 3,000 staff and 30,000 students. The newly appointed Chief Transformation Officer (CTO) was required to develop a new, ambitious digital transformation strategy that aligned to the institution’s recently updated long-term strategy. The strategy had to be supported by the University Leadership Board, while being meaningful and understandable for staff.
The Challenge
A clear strategy for digital had been absent for a number of years. Major investment in digital had taken place, but was focussed on large scale enterprise systems, utilising capital investments. Like many organisations in its sector, DMU has undergone a radical repositioning of its offering, and this had included the recruitment of a new Board and change in the executive over the preceding three years.
Digital work had traditionally been perceived to be the function of the IT services department, whose role was to fulfil the requests of the academic faculties. In other words, it was seen as a service centre rather than having a strategic role in the organisation. In addition, any new digital work was typically undertaken through a rigid project structure, with numerous committees prioritising and sanctioning work. Furthermore, opportunities presented by the use of new technologies were not being embraced e.g. a tendency to invest in on-premise solutions rather than cloud-based solutions.
It became apparent to the CTO that any new strategy would have to focus on more than just digital technology, and would have to reach across the university not just the IT services function. Furthermore the articulation of the strategy had to capture the complex nature of digital, in a way that was understandable to non-digital experts and at the same time be technically substantial that digital experts would buy-in to the strategy.
What was achieved?
- A substantial data set of the perception of digital within DMU which would act as a baseline was created.
- A clear, meaningful strategy was produced.
- The strategy was endorsed by both Executive and Board at first attempt.
- The strategy has been very well received by both digital professionals and those engaging with digital services.
- A new capability – Portfolio Management – has been created and is starting to function.
- Projects are already underway using different digital ways of working, with greater agility and these are already delivering early results.
Chief Transformation Officer, Tracey Jessop, who has overseen the creation of the strategy, shared her experience of the process. She said: “As the newly appointed Chief Transformation Officer I needed to make progress quickly and gain traction across the University for a digital transformation strategy which would enable the aims of the Empowering University Strategy to be met.
“Working with Team Animation enabled progress with pace which was also evidence based and inclusive.”
Project Execution (all the detail!)
What we did
On engagement, the first step was to create the small highly focussed team needed to support the development of a meaningful strategy and how the strategy could be deployed. The team of three picked for this work had expertise in:
- Programme, portfolio and project delivery and capability building
- Digital capability and maturity development
- Change management, culture and capability development
- Providing solutions that work in the real-world.
The assignment was carried out in 5 broad steps as described below.
Step 1: Establishing the reality
During an intense five-week period, staff from across the university were interviewed in a confidential process, allowing them to express their opinions in a safe environment. Those interviewed represented a meaningful cross section of the university and included executive stakeholders, academics, IT professionals, as well as those working in supporting functions such as marketing, organisational development, continuous improvement and students and their representatives. The output provided a stark and consistent view of the challenges needing to be addressed as part of any digital strategy. The data gathered was categorised and analysed to give a prioritised focus of the themes the strategy would need to progress.
Although this was a digital transformation strategy, many of the themes related to culture and how digital solutions were designed, developed and implemented – i.e. ways of working.
In parallel, a Digital Component Model, based on external best practice, was developed which allowed DMU to self-assess its digital maturity.
Step 2: Articulating and testing the thinking
To write an ambitious strategy, and at the same time respond to the discovery data, we developed a structure for the strategy based on three design principles:
The strategy’s scope was for the whole organisation not just the IT services function.
The strategy should describe where we are we now, where we are we going and how we will get there.
The content of the strategy must address the establishing of foundations, optimising existing assets and creating transforming activities.
Principle 3 allowed us to describe the ‘how we will get there’ by tackling foundational or fundamental challenges, whilst at the same time driving efficiency opportunities created by existing digital investments. All of these were achievable and still allowed for the development of transformational investments to be delivered, all in parallel.
This further allowed for the development of three strategic objectives, incorporated as:
- Digital thinking,
- Digital mindset
- Change management.
In essence, these require DMU staff to take a very different approach to how they think about digital, how they deliver digital developments, and how they manage the overall digital assets and their associated digital programmes and projects.
This structured thinking was then tested through a series of engaging workshops with stakeholders (including Board and Executive) and revised.
Step 3: Produce the strategy
With the feedback gained from testing, the strategy was articulated and documented. It had to be written in a way to meet the university’s governance arrangements, but also avoid technical language and jargon as far as possible to allow onward communication to all staff. At the same time, it had to be recognisable and believable to those with digital expertise. The strategy was endorsed by all parties.
Step 4: Actionable first steps
The long term aims of the strategy are ambitious, however it also described a series of near term manageable small-scale actions and projects to allow progress to be made and recognised within the first six months. Preparations were made to undertake this work so that on endorsement of the strategy action could start i.e. delivery from day one with existing resources.
Supporting this, a communications plan was developed, and delivery commenced to share the strategy across the university, utilising different communication mediums, prioritised to align to those most impacted.
Step 5: Creating capability
Delivering this large portfolio of change is a highly complex and integrated challenge that, if managed correctly, can maximise the return on investment from limited resources and capability. For this reason, we recommended an agile portfolio management approach. To facilitate this, we worked with the newly-created portfolio management team, to define capability requirements, and assist them in defining the governance arrangements, and a benefits focussed approach. Using the digital component model and maturity assessment, we were able to assist the digital services owner to identify and prioritise digital capability development. This also included consideration of ‘own-grown’ versus ‘bought in’.
Steps 3, 4 and 5 were undertaken in parallel.