Orchestrating Transformation - Preview

Orchestrating Transformation

A DISPATCH FROM THE FRONT LINES Orchestrating Transformation is the product of more than two years of research on how to execute a digital business transformation (see sidebar, “The Research”). Although we devoted plenty of energy to running surveys, tabulating statistics, and immersing ourselves in the literature on organizational change, much of the learning that went into this book came from workshops and teaching programs with ex- ecutives who were wrestling with digital transformations themselves.

In the intervening two years between the publication of Digital Vortex and Orchestrating Transformation, the peo- ple who make up the DBT Center (from both IMD and Cisco) have met with or held briefings or executive education sessions with leaders from more than 1,000 organizations to discuss digital disruption and the challenges they’re facing. We ran more than 20 cohorts of IMD’s Leading Digital Business Trans- formation and other digitally focused open-enrollment programs, and de- livered multi-customer workshops on six continents. All told, in keeping with the DBT Center’s charter of applied research, we estimate that we’ve pre- sented our frameworks and discussed their application with more than 10,000 executives around the globe. Throughout it all, we’ve engaged with a multitude of companies undergoing transformations, with wide-ranging discrepancies in terms of experience

The Research (Continued from previous page) business models and orga- nizations; 2) their capacity to manage change; and 3) how they are organized to execute a transformation. In total, we surveyed 1,030 director-lev- el-and-above executives worldwide, in both private and public organizations with a minimum of 500 employees. The survey was conducted across 14 countries and in 11 languages in mid-2018. Finally, dozens of in-depth interviews with transformation practitioners were the most important source of enlight- enment, as well as the stories featured in the book.

and outcomes. In many cases, these seminars and executive work- shops were the incubator for our concepts, spurring us to address the question of “how?” They also allowed us to road-test our frameworks and adjust them as we collected more data and feedback: Do they make sense? Do they have explanatory power? Can a company im- plement them?

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