All the World’s a (Digital) Stage: Have You Organized the Actors?

All the world is a digital stage in today’s supply chain. The digital story we are playing out is reshaping what it means to work in, and interact with, our supply chains. Our success depends not only on the clarity of that story, but also on the synchronization of actors on the digital stage. There’s a significant amount of technology transitions going on today. CEOs continue to list digitalization as their No. 1 technology priority, and digital is one of the areas where they continue to increase investment (source: 2023 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey). Automation, analytics and big data, as well as artificial intelligence are all solution priorities for CEOs. In many cases, they will look to CSCOs and supply chain leaders to deliver on the promise of digital business models and tools. The problem is that supply chain and IT leaders may treat digitalization as a technology and process challenge. But succeeding in digitalization is much the same as succeeding in staging a Broadway production: The story, staging and technical elements are important, but it is the interaction between the actors on stage that makes the difference. For supply chain digitalization, there are challenges in aligning the actors to the same digital strategy, clarifying roles, knowing when they need to play their parts or understanding how they interact on the digital stage. We find that teams want to own the story, play a part and perhaps move it in their own (independent) direction. They may feel like there are not enough actors, and that others are unwilling to participate and bring the story to conclusion. The implications of getting digital right are significant (Source: 2022 Gartner Digital Business Impact on Supply Chain Survey): 67% of companies believe that talent capabilities will be impacted. 67% indicate new leadership capabilities will be needed. 65% indicate it will impact their organization structure. 63% believe that culture will be impacted. What can supply chain leaders do to ensure that our production is a heroic epic and not a tragic comedy? Organize, organize, organize. High-performing organizations are much more likely to invest in roles that strategize, design and deploy digital business, tools and capabilities. They are using the power of organizing people using teams, dedicated roles and digital capabilities to magnify the impact of digital strategies. In fact, teams of humans with connected purpose, clear roles, deep expertise and network relationships have been delivering exceptional outcomes for more than 10,000 years. Let’s keep it going. Organize to Lead Leaders in the digital space are organizing to lead, using digital governing councils at the enterprise level and in supply chain to set the story. This provides the opportunity for everyone to get on the same page, aligning the purpose and outcomes of investments. Digital leaders are investing in digital centers of excellence (COEs) to lead the transformation. These COEs have clearly defined objectives to enable and govern the change, redesign work and digital tools, provide digital expertise or disrupt the status quo using next-generation technologies. They play a lead role in the transformation, and importantly, they help to coordinate all other actors on the digital stage. Organize to Connect Digital transformation leaders often feel like they don’t have the staff they need. But if they map all the actors currently involved in pursuing technology change, process change and digital change, it is likely they have all the staff they could want. They just are not connected to them yet. Taking a whole-system view helps digital leaders map out the various individuals and teams doing work in the space of change and transformation. Organize to Adopt Where our digital efforts will often fall short is investing in organizing to adopt digital tools and capabilities at the user level. This is where leading companies are investing in dedicated digital transition teams that organize efforts to drive adoption in functions, regions or local sites. These teams are driving change, enabling communication, building curriculum and inspiring curiosity in the digitalization work. Though we would like to assume mandated change will happen, success comes by interacting at the user level. This means coaching and inspiring actors to play their parts daily. Organizing networks of actors such as change coaches, change ambassadors, user trainers, subject matter experts, super users and early adopters builds an informal transition network. This network can have an exponential effect on change, as networks influence each other on how to use tools, when to use them and why to use them. Finally, using communities of practice, user support groups and gamifying learning and digital tool use can ignite the crowd. By using the natural inclination of people to gather, build relationships, learn from each other and influence opinions, digital leaders can leverage the power of many without having to add dedicated actors.   Ken Chadwick VP Analyst Gartner Supply Chain Ken.Chadwick@gartner.com   Take part in the 2023 Gartner Future of Supply Chain survey   Listen and subscribe to the Gartner Supply Chain Podcast on Gartner.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts