ALIF
Struggling to digitize?
"Don't fight forces. Use them."
– R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, 1932
There is no shortage of ideas, concepts, methodologies, and applications designed for change management. We are in yet another new era of technology-driven mutations in the ways everything is done. SaaS and cloud solutions, coupled with advanced analytics using data gathered from Things everywhere promise a panacea of problem solving.
The uncomfortable truth is, however, that there is no one single magic bullet for digital transformation. While SaaS promises to leapfrog any firm to the next level by just entering a credit card number, quick fixes do not make for successful transformations. Organizations of all sizes and technological levels struggle to embrace the immense opportunities of cloud computing and advanced analytics. An advanced analytics-driven organization is one that effectively and efficiently aligns marketplace changes with with the hypersonic speed of innovation. There is a right way and a wrong way: The wrong way is an anchor. The right way is a sail. Now is the time–the only time likely within a generation–to decide whether your organization will lead, be constantly catching up or stuck in inertia.
ALIF begins at the end–with results. If all is unknown, then start with what is known: The thing you do know is what you want, your desired results. So ALIF starts with your expectations and works backwards. ALIF is not easy, but it is simple: It is based on teaching skills targeted squarely on results. ALIF is a 3+1 approach: Academy, Living Lab, Incubator and Facilitator. The first and most vital step is the human element: ALIF's network of leading experts are dedicated to educating and elevating your people. The human dimension is the thing that sparks the transformation of organizational consciousness, the concept of what the organization is and how it works.
In this way, ALIF empowers teams to develops solutions and implement them to reach your expectations. Or, as British philosophy writer Alan Watts remarked, "The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."
In the third Incubation step, ALIF guides teams to design and prototype real solutions to meet real objectives, and to truly "join the dance". Participants can expect tangible results within days.
Finally, in the +1 Facilitation stage, this prototype then serves as a basis for vendor selection and makes vendor relations clearer and more productive. At this ALIF stage, the prototype can be rolled out across the organization, hand-in-hand with the right vendors in the right way. Simultaneously, digital transformation creates an agile organization. Again, ALIF means "beginning": Agile project execution and beginning again becomes second nature as organizational direction is supported with intelligent business intelligence. It is an organic process, which naturally leads to evolving the organization into better adapted, higher achieving organisms.
ALIF means "beginning": Agile project execution and beginning again becomes second nature as organizational direction is supported with intelligent business intelligence.
3+1
Synergy is the intelligence of a highly complex system, the nature of which is unknown to the individual members. Because it goes back to this point: that we are always entring a new environment. And we’ll never fully know what the new environment is, because the only environments we know are the past ones. There is always then operating in the development of cellular life on any level a new way of organization higher than any existing form. And we’re not aware of it until after it has happened.
–ALAN WATTS
Leadership development Consulting Solutions
Facilitator:
Organizational roll-out and implementation
Living Lab:
Team/ Department Development
Incubator:
Prototype development
Academy:
Executive Education
Leap to Agile Organization
Organizational Ownership
Alif (or alef or aleph, transliterated) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads (alphabets), including Phoenician ʾālep , Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap , Syriac ʾālap̄ , and Arabic alif ا.
It is something that is first, a beginning.
See also: baseline, birth, commencement, dawn, day one, genesis, get-go, inception, kickoff, launch, morning, start, threshold
1
STEP ONE:
ENABLE LEADERS
TALENT & CAPBILITY (organizational capability)
Convince decision makers to go all-in on digital and analytics
It’s perhaps understandable that executives may be reluctant to go all-in on digital transformations. These efforts require a re-thinking at every level and can lead to very different ways of working. Transformation of this magnitude can be incremental, however, a little here and a little there will be at cross-purposes with the necessary transformation required in this emerging age. In other words, there is no such thing as just a little transformation. The ALIF Academy step empowers decision makers to lead with new skills and new confidence.
.
The greatest risk lies in doing nothing.
Digitization means automation and automation means efficiencies at scale. The flip side is that revenues, for example in services, will decrease as automation fills efficiency gaps. Businesses operating within these gaps can only recover these inevitable losses through developing and exploiting analytics capabilities wall to wall. Big picture, actionable information, no matter the field, sector or product, is the ultimate deliverable.
Actionable information, acquired through advanced analytics, is the catalyst making sustainable organizations. An agile management system is thus attained–however commitment must come from the top and will require leaving old ways behind.
A
Academy
Find
The Right Reason
"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
― Laozi
2
STEP TWO:
DEVELOP TEAMS
People, systems and value proposition are the three equal legs of a digital transformation stool. The Living Lab focuses on the human dimension needed for a stable, enduring transformation.
Software engineering, customer-experience design, digital marketing, and data analytics are the skills required to move into this present digital age. Individuals with these skills are needed to create a fast-moving, risk-taking, innovation-orientated organization, however, they are few and far between. Even as the workforce catches up, managers will still not have the option to hire their way out of the problem, because new hires will need to work within the existing organization to be effective.
In addition, replacing loyal and competent workers can do irreparable damage to a firm's reputation and employee morale. Plus, the company knowledge, ideas and right mindset very likely already exists within your organization. The potential just needs to be realized.
TEAM SELECTION
The Living Lab identifies change leaders by profiling the innovators in your organization. Using two rounds and a 28-point analysis system, ALIF profiles innovators. We determine, for example, how the people in your organization would like to contribute and how they envision the company.
Give your staff job security and the opportunity to develop.
L
Living Lab
Map
The Right Way
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”
― General George Patton
3
STEP THREE:
PROTOTYPING
Find the best partnerships to overcome skills gaps
By starting with results and immediately prototyping, ALIF offers tangible results in just days. In a structured way, using analytics correctly, the organization can sidestep the "paralysis of analysis"–the byproduct of an abundance of information.
VENDOR SELECTION
In the Incubator stage, not only will a product, service or operational objective be prototyped, but this work will build a framework upon which strategic partnerships can form. This makes the often time-consuming vendor contracting process easier and vendor relations more effective. The objective sought, for example, though a device or connected thing, can be seamlessly integrated through the software application and the cloud choice.
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT
At the end of this stage, a viable digital product will be achieved. The objective is always a practical, real-world application, that is ready for scaling.
I
Incubator
Develop The Right Thing
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
― Peter Drucker
4
F
Facilitator
Because it is The Right Thing to Do
“We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.”
― Marcus Aurelius
STEP FOUR:
SCALING
Predict your future by actively creating it.
The fourth and never final stage is rolling out the technologies in a framework of continually improving organizational transformation. Analytics-based decision support serves as the ideal undergirding to move your organization from a static, conventionally structured firm to an agile organism. Because targets move, visions are created instead of hard and fast targets. Incrementally, changes in direction are made to meet client requirements and market demands.
The Third Industrial Revolution saw the advent of millions of markets of one realized through automation and global supply chains. The Fourth Industrial Revolution takes this the innovations of the past two decades to an entirely new level. It links any and all market participants. Formerly unrelated sectors or perhaps only peripherally related fields will become intrinsically immeshed.
AGILE ACCERATION
By applying agile management, your company will be in a position to naturally adapt to technology and market progress and the challenges and rewards these bring.