What is Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is the change associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society.-Wikipedia

Digital Transformation is a buzz-word which has been cropping up in a big way over the last few years. Everyone talks of the need to have a Digital Transformation. But what exactly is it?

As defined in Wikipedia above we see a slightly limited definition, as it covers only half of the term “Digital Transformation”. The other half is the word “transformation”. When we talk of transformation, we associate it with a “Paradigm Shift” or Foundational change. This essentially means in the context of a business; that every aspect of the business from the operating model to the consumer needs changes. This is necessitated by change in consumer demand, competition and technology impact.

Technology has been affecting us for decades. Are you aware that it was an employee of Kodak, who demonstrated the first proof of concept of a working “Digital Camera” and by around 1989 and a working model like the ones available today was showcased? There was stiff resistance to this product internally at Kodak as it was felt that it would negatively impact their camera and camera films business. The quick shift to Digital Photography and the demise of Kodak is history.

Going further back by a hundred years, Western Union, the first true Communications company in the world failed to get on the bandwagon of a new product developed by Alexender Graham Bell, “The Telephone”. The rest is history

In the words of the Oxford dictionary, transformation is “a marked change in form, nature, or appearance”. Transformation of businesses has been happening for a very long time, the only change is that the latest change is impacted by technology.

Digital Transformation is now looked at as Transformation of business by the impact of Digital Technology, or being more specific Information Technology. Information technology has begun influencing business to such a large extent that business dynamics have been transformed. Logistics companies run on IT; e-commerce has changed retail; a downing of IT can stop all travel. Witness the outage in August 2016 wheren an outage at Delta airlines caused 2300 flights to be cancelled. HSBC, RBS and so many other banks have been greatly affected by well reported IT failures.

So we come to the moot point, all business, no matter which industry they operate in, are heavily reliant on IT. It is not enough for one or two functions like Marketing, Sales, Production to be digitally or IT aware and comfortable. All support departments HR, Finance, Purchase and others  have to be equally aboard on “Digital Transformation”. To achieve Digital Transformation you need to bring about a change in Mind-set, Processes, delivery capability and communication with all stake holders. 

ITIL Vs Devops

With the increasing usage of the term Devops in today’s environment, many often ask if Devops and ITIL are in conflict. As per Wikipedia Devops  (“DEVelopment and OPerationS") is a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes, while ITIL is an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, which is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services (operations) with the needs of business.

I would like to term Devops as a new philosophy which links the agile means of software development to its implementation in a live or operational environment. Both Devops and ITIL are products of the era in which they originated. ITIL originated in the late 80’s at a time when it was realized that there was a growing dependence of organizations on IT, and it was imperative to have standard practises in place to manage. It was also a time of the waterfall method of software development, highly planned and controlled development environments.  

In a world where timelines are reducing and there is a need to effect countless changes in services sooner, rather than later, from development to deployment and operations, we have seen the evolution of the Devops philosophy.

In the words of Adriaan De Jong, co-author of "The Manager's Guide to Continuous Delivery”, Devops is “ Multi-Disciplinary Teams, who take end-to-end responsibility to deliver customer value early and often while continuously improving their process.”    

There are those who are proponents of using ITIL with DevOps. In the words of Gene Kim, co-author of the “The Phoenix Project”; “The DevOps Movement fits perfectly with ITSM.”  Adding further he says “ITIL and ITSM still are best codifications of the business processes that underpin IT operations, and actually describe many of the capabilities needed into order for IT operations to support a DevOps-style work stream.” Phil Tee, CEO and co-founder of Moogsoft, states further “ITIL is not in conflict with DevOps, but it must be adapted to DevOps practices in order to define clearly where issues arise and how to solve problems efficiently.”

While there are critics of ITIL who chafe at the sequential and plan-centric approach of ITIL, Kaimar Karu the head of the ITSM practise at Axelos, the owners of the ITIL Framework, says “Processes don’t remove the need for common sense, the way to ensure the process is both fit for use and fit for purpose is to ask: ‘What is the simplest process I could design that would support the control requirements while ensuring that customer value is created?’

In conclusion; one can think of the adoption of DevOps practices within the ITIL aligned Enterprise as an evolution from an orderly system based on processes to a system geared to facing the real-time challenges for speedy implementation of services. By using your ITIL processes as starting points for analysis of potential benefits, an Enterprise DevOps implementation can give great focus. It can identify pain points that could benefit from greater collaboration and automation.

The Enemy of Great is Hope

The opening lines of the book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins, start with “Good is the enemy of Great”.  Building a great organization means not being satisfied by doing a good job.

The good job in many cases is the usual business practice of increasing targets by 10-15% on a yearly basis; a classic example of BAU, or business as usual. It relies on the time tested theory of having a stable business environment and growth based on past efforts and results. The problem with this practice, in the words of Peter L Bernstein is “We simply do not know what the future holds”.

In today’s world technology change and attitudinal change have brought about a major disruptive trend. Today’s technology is often history by the end of the week. Yesterday’s technology is obsolete today. Yet, in such an environment, we still see a tendency to live in a state of hope, in a mind-set of carefully choreographed excel sheets and beautifully designed Power point presentations, with awesome bar-charts. These beautiful presentations are the biggest manifestations of hope.

This sense of living on hope is not an isolated and rare event as it may seem. We are all prey to this phenomenon at various stages. When things are not working out or going wrong, we fall back on “Hope”. We hope that things will turn out right. We “Hope” that we will meet our targets. We “Hope” that the economy will be all right. We “Hope” that the boss will give a raise.

The problem with “Hope” is that it lulls us into a sense of complacency. When a sales person sees a “Sales pipeline” he is prone to feel “Hope” that he will meet his target, little realizing that he has to be on guard, and that a sale is a sale only when the money is in the bank, not when he has got a letter of intent, nor when he has got a purchase order.

In his book “Great by Choice” Jim Collins has given a fascinating commentary on the race to reach the South Pole, between two adventurers, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in 1911. For one team led by Amundsen, the journey was a path to glory while for the other it was a path to defeat and death. The difference between the two is best summarized by these words of Roald Amundsen:

“Victory awaits him who has everything in order – luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck”.

To be successful you need to be paranoid, have thought out many variables and have multiple strategies in place. Great leaders are never complacent; never live in hope that things would work as planned. In an article on June 20, 1991, by the LA times, “Nightmare a reality, Microsoft Chief Warns”, it quotes Bill Gates as stating:

"Our nightmare--IBM 'attacking' us in systems software, Novell 'defeating' us in networking and more agile, customer-oriented applications competitors getting their Windows act together--is a reality.”

Hope can be a very disabling attribute. It “disables” action and weakens effort. For success in any venture we have to overcome “Hope” and rely on action. It is therefore only true that the enemy of Great is Hope.

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” - Dale Carnegie

Seeing the Glass Half Full

Sacking your boss typically denotes a process of quitting your job and setting up your own business. However in the new age world maybe it could mean something else too? Is it possible that if both boss and his reportee help the reportee to sack his boss, both could benefit?

Sometime ago, my colleague came up to me at the coffee counter, and in a light vein stated, “I am tired; at home my spouse (ok that part is edited) takes me to task  to for small things, at office my customers can be demanding and then when it comes to my boss, the less said the better”. While ordinarily I would have heard this through without any comment, I couldn’t refrain myself from commenting, “why don’t you grow your business, so that you are the boss, and you have some direct reportees, maybe that would help relieve some of the pressures?"

This colleague heard me through and agreed that the suggestion was worth a try. He worked hard and luckily for him, his manager realized that if his reportee grew, the chances of his growth also grew.

It is usually said that “The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says the glass is half empty”. The question we need to ask ourselves is “what do we see?” The manger saw his colleagues’ glass as half full, and supported him. He realized that he could use the skills of his team to fulfil his goals of filling his own glass as well. The result, everyone grew.

Quite often, we are too focussed on ourselves and preserving our position and making ourselves indispensable. We fail to realize that if we do not help people in our teams to grow, we would be forever stuck in our current positions. If we help our reportees in their effort to “sack their boss”; we would also grow.

“We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.”

― C. JoyBell C.

Managers need to help their team members to grow, and then only would they themselves grow. They have to help their team-members sack their boss.

Money doesn't Grow on Trees

I have heard a number of conversation stoppers, but this one really beat them all. A couple of days ago, my young daughter came over and after a bit of chit chat asked me for some money. As usual I used my routine defense, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”.  Pat came the reply, “I know, that’s why I am asking you, else I would have been climbing some trees”. Behind her I could sense her mother smiling and knew that in future I was in trouble. My daughter in the meanwhile, got what she wanted.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. - Oscar Wilde

Later as I thought this over, I just asked myself, how many people really understand the value of money, as either revenue or cost? Here by revenue I do not mean the one in excel sheets, such as accounts receivable, but actual possession of money. Many a company has gone down because they couldn’t manage their cash flows. It’s always good to know that you are entitled to receive money, for services or products rendered, buts it of no use if you do not have it when you actually need it. You just have to read the papers to understand what I mean. Greece owes a few hundred billion dollars, but it’s all paper money.

The other thing I often hear is the urgency of cost control. I have seen so much fanaticism about it. Just the other day we came across a company which was thinking of doing training for a group of employees. This company was planning to have business transformation by converting their application development from the waterfall methodology to an agile methodology. And guess what, they wanted to train the senior people for two days, and the junior people for one day. The logic being that the less experienced guys needed less time “for a mindset change” hence train them for one day and in the process save money. Yeah you’d save money in the short term but probably waste the whole amount in a failed transformation.

Money actually does not grow on trees. It needs to be earned judiciously by the application of mind, firmness of resolve and consistent hard work. There is only so much you can save by “cost control”, but to grow it you have to earn it.

What advise do you give your children entering the Workforce?

It was my birthday last week.  The evening before the big day, my elder daughter, in her last year in college decided to pay her dad a visit. She is in the final year of college, staying on campus in a college where she is pursuing B-Tech in Chemical Engineering. Over the weekend, she wanted advice on the upcoming “Campus Placements” and general advice on what it was like entering the workforce.

So we sat down first preparing her resume for the placements; placing her mark-sheets, certificates, and all the paraphernalia one gathers as a student. My first question was to ask her what was the single biggest achievement she could be proud of as a student. I was expecting her to reply that the fact that she had won a 50% waiver on tuition fees every year was the ultimate achievement. I was not wrong, in my assumption, but the spin that she gave in the discussion, was that “she was consistent”. She consistently worked hard to maintain her grades, despite the challenges she faced, like being out of studies for almost a month due to medical reasons. I then realized that I could perhaps learn a thing or two from her as well; as we discussed work and employment. The following were the highlights:

Charting a path. We agreed that she needed to decide what companies she wanted to focus on, and the kind of roles she was looking for. She had to chart her own path; it could not be made for her. This would have to be done by her alone at every stage of her career, and she needed to see the long term while taking those decisions.

Adaptability: When the decision to take up Chemical engineering happened, it was out of love for organic chemistry. During her internship she realized, being on the shop floor was difficult as she was allergic to some strong chemicals. So she needed to adapt to changed circumstances, without giving up her passion. Be adaptable and be ready to change, always; as you never what life and circumstances have in store for you.

Determination and perseverance: Life has its ups and downs, and we would constantly face challenges. She had faced a major challenge in her second year when she missed a complete month of studies, but she did not let it come in the way of maintaining her status as an achiever and merit scholar. Similarly we would face challenges, but we should not let them come in the way of our lives.

Managing conflict. In one of her internships, she must have been witness to “office politics” and wanted to understand how she could manage awkward situations and conflict, especially as she would be a junior. We agreed that the golden rule was “keep the ear open, and the mouth closed”, as active participation in office politics would achieve nothing except brief exhilaration. Reaction was not a good idea, but taking measured responses was always appropriate

Nurture relationships: Maintain relationships without looking at the potential benefits a relationship brings. Do good and you get good.  Learn to forgive and forget.

Don't Carry Grudges: They never benefit anyone. They may give a high, but would always lay you low in the long term. Keeping internal peace would go a long way in maintaining a balance in life.

As we finished our discussion, I realized I needed to reinforce some of these qualities myself.

I am the Master of my Fate

A couple of decades ago in June 1974, India celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Coronation of Chattrapati Shivaji, the great Maratha King. It was more memorable for me as I was chosen to give a speech on that occasion. I was very young and it was to be my first public speaking engagement and I was full of fear, apprehending ridicule and laughter if I messed up or forgot my lines as I sensed that perhaps with my limited knowledge I was not equipped for the stage.

To encourage me, my teacher gave me a pep talk and told me the following:

“Just go up to the stage. Do not focus on any one person. Remember that as the speaker, you know more than the people in the audience. That is why they are present to listen”.

Many years were to pass before I actually realized the full impact of what my teacher did. She motivated me to speak and carry myself with full confidence. From time to time we need motivation to be able to carry on with the activities we require to do. So what is Motivation?

Depending on the definition it could be:

Motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain behavior. It represents the reasons for people's actions, desires, and needs. “ - Wikipedia

Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/motivation.html#ixzz3fsRrvgnF 

From a personal and internal motivation perspective I view motivation as the approach of people towards fate. Some choose to accept fate as it comes while others choose to face it head on. Of course both states may not be carved in stone. These two aspects can be explained by these two poems:

Lack of motivation and acceptance of fate can be seen through the words of William Shakespeare:

“What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide”

Incredible motivation on the other hand is non-acceptance of fate, best exemplified from these famous lines from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

It matters not how strait the gate,      

How charged with punishments the scroll,    

I am the master of my fate                

I am the captain of my soul

To move forward in life and face its turbulence we need to decide whether we resist wind or tide.