Five Leverage Points to Run a High Performance Digital Organization

Information flow: Organizations like individuals, need to keep the energy flow and stay in a healthy cycle of movement to operate smoothly. Information does not live alone but permeates into everywhere in the businesses. Information or knowledge flow helps to unlock latent expertise, collaborate through communities with geographically-distributed teams, It’s important to identify how information is associated with the tangible value of the business, products, and resources; and then, refine information and capture insight to explore growth opportunities and prevent risks. Information flow is, in fact, a leverage point to synchronize business functions and create business synergy. An organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear and accountable tasks. The ultimate goal of leveraging information flow is to get the mass collaboration and multiply business performance through less hierarchy and highly integrated processes designed for running a hyperconnected and interdependent digital business.

Prioritization techniques: A company has finite resources to apply for getting the best yield possible to meet stakeholders’ expectations. Many organizations today are inundated with overwhelming growth of information and overloaded with urgent issues or daily “busyness,” they are transaction driven and short-term focused. To survive and thrive in today’s “VUCA” digital new normal, companies need to understand prioritization technique is a critical leverage point that enables them to spend time and energy on strategic goals and result-driven activities, bring up transparency and force people to become more effective and creative for solving problems really matter and drive change smoothly. Continuously try to improve, develop, change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a long-term business advantageFrom a management perspective, have a respected intra-organizational agreement of priorities and resources to keep the organization healthy and fit.

Competency identification: Running a high performance business is all about setting the right policies, identifying the right people and doing the right things in the right way to solve the right problems timely. Thus, competency identification either individually or collectively is an important leverage point for maximizing business potential. In reality, business risks include talent-related risks, it’s important to identify the skill gaps, define the technical/functional competencies required to achieve business goals, put the right people with the right capabilities in the right position to solve right problems timely. In practice, it is much easier to say than doing because it involves the multiple intelligence assessment processes to evaluate people and problems. Hence, organizations must address their common and unique skills requirements and map that out through some sort of skills/competency matrix within their organization, gain foresight about human potential, and treat people not just as cost or asset, but as the capital to invest in.

Feedback-feedforward cycle: Feedback is the information gained from experience or lessons learned from the past. Feedback should always be genuinely precise, proper and substantive. It tells you what is happening so that you can adapt and make continuous progress. Therefore, feedback is a leverage point to speed up learning and accelerate performance. If you want your team to create a great future, they need to be responsive to feedback. Such feedback helps not only to act but aids to feedforward. Organizations are destined to look forward and step into the future, and in doing so, leveraging feedback-forward is about seeing both the past and the future, and the past is blended into the draw of the future. It means that the feedback forms have to be creative as to focus on both past performance and future goals or changes to achieve the required goals.

Effective governance mechanism: Corporate governance is where resources are allocated to turning the strategy into a reality. Corporate governance needs to be part of strategic planning to ensure accountability. Effective governance mechanism is a critical leverage point for the business to facilitate the successful functioning of an organization while ensuring there are adequate controls in place to operate responsibly in accordance with its business values and strategic goals. The governance mechanism needs to be well embedded in business processes to encourage desirable behavior. If it isn’t, the strategic planning of the business perhaps becomes a synonym for wishful thinking. If organizations feel stifled by effective governance discipline, it means they have not reached the high level of business maturity yet, or put another way, they are undisciplined. The effective GRC effort shouldn’t stifle change or innovation. Rather, they have built the right mechanism to lead transformative changes or achieve strategic goals with premium speed.

Digital transformation is the change, but on a grand level, at the level of the system. It’s important to identify effective leverage points for expanding in all directions horizontally and vertically and making significant impact on different aspects of the business to transform the company’s underlying functions, processes, and cultures. Up to the next level, businesses not only need to adapt faster, but orchestrate a full-fledged digital transformation.

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