Effective companies seek to intelligently manage their development approaches.
Development occurs continuously to respond to market changes, competition requirements and customer needs. In this respect, it is deemed of great importance to enjoy the ability to anticipate, plan and deploy a thoughtful development approach – as compared to companies that were left with no other choice but ensure the evolvement of their operations; hence the difference between contained and controlled development.
However, there is no reason for a company to be subject to control. Whether occupying a dominant position in relevant sector or losing momentum, a company can – at any time – put in place specific actions that will allow the maintenance or regain of competitiveness, especially if it:
- Promotes a creativity and innovation environment;
- Paves the way for digital transformation; and
- Anticipates change management and implementation of continuous improvement.
In this respect, creativity and innovation constitute processes and approaches that companies must encourage; and do not imply any terms or concepts that are only reserved for certain types of companies rather than others. All companies can, therefore, develop all required factors to promote creativity and to design processes that would contribute to the development of new ideas.
As part of this improvement logic, digital transformation holds a place of choice and constitutes a topic of discussion, going well beyond developing a website or switching to e-commerce. Digital transformation must, also, be approached as a whole as it affects all of the company components (including processes, professions, cultures, organizational structures, etc.) by contributing to the dematerialization of certain activities and/or automation of repetitive tasks with low-added values. This transformation constitutes – therefore – part of the overall performance improvement logic; and, any company embarking on a digital transformation journey must be aware that of all of its departments are to be involved and affected.
Digital transformation can, therefore, imply the use of cloud computing, metadata, big data, the Internet of Things, among others. Managers – and in particular HR officers – must identify potential impact and assess departmental and organizational readiness.
Last but not least, one must avoid to think that transformations have an end date; transformations are just the start of an infinite continuous improvement journey. In this context, the implementation of a change management approach to ensure organizational agility makes perfect sense; and the execution of projects to be delivered (as part of a transformational framework or not) can call all relevant processes, professions and roles into question. This, therefore, justifies the allocation of a Change Manager (and – ideally – a Sponsor), in charge of the development of success conditions that go beyond the mere delivery of projects, thus implying acceptance and adoption by relevant stakeholders.