1. Leadership skills

Defining strategic metrics:

• Strategic metrics focus on outcomes and strategic objectives not just performance and quality
• Indicators for:
  • Tracking strategic initiatives (are we on track ?)
  • Relevant and achievable strategy (is change required ?)
  • Achieving the anticipated benefits (is change required ?)

Managing diverse environments:

• Understand that digital organizations have diverse cultures/backgrounds within the staff but also diversity in technologies, management disciplines, knowledge
• Develop a leadership style to encourage collaboration

Operationalizing strategy, leaders in a strategic role may feel uncomfortable:

• Must be visionaries and pragmatists
• Must combine imagination and application
• Must be comfortable working in the unknown

Business and technology management skills: digital leaders are business leaders possessing the minimum level of skill and knowledge that qualifies them to lead the organization. Understand technology but also command the languages of finance, marketing, business operations, information security, management methodologies, technology management

1.1 Digital mindset

Key message: set of attitudes and behaviors that cause someone to constantly consider the possibilities that digital technology offers their organization and its stakeholders and look for ways to make those possibilities real:

• Understand how technology changes how people work and live and work to ensure the organization remain relevant in that context
• Understand that the changes impact all – professionally, personally, socially
• Use emerging technologies but not without forgetting the human sid

Characteristics:

• Facilitate vision and empower teams to achieve it
• Encourage teams to find better ways of working
• Understand change is not immediate: consider the culture of the organization
• Empower and not micromanage
• Measure outcomes not just the quality of outputs…

A mindset isn’t hired or developed , result of values and beliefs. A person who understands the business and has shown success change in previous roles

Needs of a conservative organization pursuing digital transformation:

• Must change leadership criteria, hiring practices
• Get senior executives to support a cultural shift and work practices
• Hire those who have made the changes in the past
• Listen and support new hire’s recommendations, even when uncomfortable
• Ensure measures, behaviors, language support the new vision and desired cultural change

1.2 Communication

Excellent communication is a fundamental requirement; must be able to:

• Communicate at every level of the organization
• Plan and deploy a communication strategy
• Analyze feedback to ensure effective communication
• Practice transparency with stakeholders, update frequently
• Emphasize outcomes and not performance

1.3 Relationship management

Must have collaboration and coordination to handle the vast number of changes when digitally transforming

Leaders rely on alignment, communication, collaboration across the organization. Relationship management is necessary:

• Establishes shared or mutually recognized goals
• Facilitates a culture of no-blame cooperation and collaboration
• Promotes continual learning among and between teams
• Sets guidelines and policies for open and transparent communication
• Defines how to identify, prevent, and mediate in conflict situations

1.4 Evaluate emerging technology

Digital leaders not only educate themselves on what technologies and industry trends are emerging, but must be able to evaluate them in terms of the opportunities or threats they represent for the organization

Requires an in-depth understanding of the organization’s:

• Current architecture, and impacted components
• Business model
• Products and services, and their value propositions
• Operating model and value streams

1.5 Agile management

Digital organizations must be able to manage the high volume of innovation or change that their customers demand

Agile approaches reduce time to market and enable the organization to respond to the level of change in their industry

1.6 Education and learning

Education is an ongoing activity and is at the root of success of digital organizations:

• Understand the changes occurring in the internal and external environments
• Identify technology and industry trends, and how to exploit
• Learn about mistakes of other organizations… and not repeat them
• Communicate details about the organization’s digital and IT strategy, and set expectations about the changes it will introduce
• Inform stakeholders how the use of new technologies will impact the organization
• Achieve higher levels of enthusiasm for the DITS initiatives
• Promote a sense of humility: no one in the organization knows everything

Activities of leaders as learners and educators:

• Self-education
• Educating peers and other stakeholders

1.7 Education and training

Purpose:

• To understand the reasons for the changes
• To link changes to strategic outcomes
• To ensure that all stakeholders understand what is expected of them
• To learn new skills required to work within the new environment
• To indicate how measurement of performance will change
• To indicate how success will be rewarded in the new environment
• To equip teams to assess their contribution to the new initiative

Includes educating:

• Peers
• Consumers
• Shareholders
• Suppliers
• Managers and staff

1.8 Education program purpose

Scope	Audience	Purpose
Strategic context	Everyone	To explain the changes in the environment and what opportunities they represent for the organization. (Why are we doing this ?)
High-level overview of each strategic initiative and its outcomes	Everyone	To highlight the overall vision for digital strategy in the organization and show why this work is so important. (Where are we going ?)
Detailed overview of each strategic initiative and its outcomes	Senior and middle management, senior technical experts	To indicate the level of effort, what is required of each part of the organization, and how they will be measured. (What are we going to be doing ?)
Detailed description of the objectives and activities of each initiative	Managers and staff involved in each initiative	To educate staff involved in the initiative about exactly what is expected of them, how they will be working, who they will be working with, what the outputs are and when they are expected, how everyday work will continue alongside this initiative, etc. (What am I going to be doing ?)
How to use the tools that form part of each initiative	Practitioners (staff, partners, suppliers, contractors, etc.)	To educate and train those building the solution in how to use the tools available to them, and the features and functionality of the technology being configured and implemented. (How will I be doing it ?)
How to work in the changed organization	Managers and practitioners	To educate and train those using the new tools, processes, and working methods in how to do so effectively. (How has my job changed as a result of these changes?)

 

Go back to ITIL 4 Strategic Leader Certification Course: Implementing a Digital Strategy to finish this chapter or to the main page ITIL 4 Strategic Leader Certification Course.