Walking a mile in the Chief Digital Officer’s shoes during the Digital Transformation age
Is a call from the cybersecurity team the new “red phone” level emergency? Is enterprise culture nimble enough to lead digital transformation? Are companies prepared to leverage 5G powered edge analytics?
If you’re sitting in the Chief Digital Officer’s seat, you’re going to be fielding some hot questions. Digital divisions are one of the fastest growing segments in enterprise, and boardrooms worldwide are looking for people with the breadth of skills possessed by Jen Felch, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Information Officer and President of Dell Digital for Dell Technologies. Lucky for me, Jen agreed to come on my show right at the start of 2020, such a perfect time in the most amazing year yet for digital transformation acceleration.
What does a CDO and CIO do? “We have all the responsibility of an IT organisation plus the responsibility to help digital transformation across the company,” says Jen. By changing and broadening IT name, the goal is to change attitude and behaviour, scope of thinking and aspiration. Beyond “dealing with IT systems,” a digital team aims to create new digital experiences and efficiencies not just for customers but for employees. “That’s Dell Digital,” says Jen. I call it a new way to solve business AND technology problems.
And of course, you have to keep the massive changes at Dell over the last four years in mind. They’ve upended just about every aspect of their business and come out charging ahead, a perfect setting for a new digital behaviour agenda. As Jen says, “How are we going to transform this new company to be what we aspire to be?”
Part of that transformation has involved moving design and DevOps to the forefront of IT. Cloud native, software defined infrastructure is normal. IT software developers are writing mission critical, scalable applications. It’s actually less about turning things upside down and more leveraging new thinking and perspectives.
“Design and DevOps are really important to an IT organisation. Think about early stage software companies who are really focused on customers’ latent needs. That’s what we’re trying to drive with our focus on design,” says Jen. “We’re trying to bring that discovery and framing process to all of the teams.”
One of the hardest parts to all this is almost inevitably managing through change. A lot of us get so used to buzz words like “digital transformation” that we don’t even really hear them anymore. Jen says she thinks of digital transformation as “people engaging directly with the system with no intervention.” All the information you need should be at your fingertips, without having to stop, look or ask. That in itself is a mindset shift.
It’s not that human interaction is bad – “we like talking to other people, but ultimately, we like not to ever have to ask for help because things just take care of themselves.” Fewer forms, no help tickets.
“The path to digital” spans an entire cultural and behaviour shift. Jen says you “can’t command cultural change, you have to live it” – and, I imagine, earn it. Digital leaders have to live their data, they can’t use historical ways of working (no getting your information from email or powerpoint, no printing anything) and they need to take part in the new user stories.
Training of course is a huge part of the transformation. Dell Digital has a 12 weeks coaching program where staff bring their work with them and learn to re-frame it in the context of solving a problem with their business partner. Participants span all the generations, from GenZ to boomers, and Jen says the results are phenomenal. “You bring the demand for a modern experience from one set of people and the expertise of highly scalable operations from another set and create an environment where they learn from each other.
