Orchestrating Transformation - Preview

Orchestrating Transformation

The DBT Center’s latest research (see the sidebar, “About Us”) with 1,030 executives from around the world found that 65 percent of large and midsized organizations have hired a chief digital officer. (Of course, not all digital executives wear this title. They may be called “head of digital” or “VP of transformation,” or they may not have a new title at all.) Transformation, we’ve discovered, is a job that influences virtually all leadership roles in large organizations. In most cases, however, those

who are tasked with executing a digi- tal business transformation are set up to fail. And this failure is rooted in how the assignment is framed at the outset. Most digital business transformations focus on the “digital,” when what they really need to focus on is the “business transformation.” Our last book, Digital Vortex: How To- day’s Market Leaders Can Beat Disrup- tive Competitors at Their Own Game, delved deeply into the “why” and the “what” of digital business transfor- mation. In its introduction, though, we made clear that Digital Vortex was “not a book that is, strictly speaking, about ‘transformation’—at least not in the classic sense of the word.” We intend- ed it not as a blueprint for transforma- tion per se, but as we wrote then, as a “manual for how to compete.” Today, executing a digital business transformation is the pressing busi- ness challenge that preoccupies lead- ers, which is why we tackle it here in Orchestrating Transformation: How to

About Us The Global Center for Digital Business Transformation (DBT Center), an IMD and Cisco Initiative, was officially opened on June 23, 2015. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the campus of IMD, one of the world’s top-ranked business schools, the DBT Center comprises researchers from both of its founding entities: IMD and Cisco, the Silicon Valley-based high-tech leader. Our research focuses on digital disruption, business model innovation, and trans- formation-oriented themes involving people, process, and technology change. Execu- tives come to the DBT Center to grapple with and innovate around their most pressing business challenges.

Deliver Winning Performance with a Connected Approach to Change. “How do we begin?” “How do we define success?” “How do we con- struct our roadmap?” These are the questions this book will address.

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