The importance of Business Change Champions: Are people really the secret to successful cloud adoption?

Our advice to those embarking on a cloud transformation? Avoid leaning on a ‘digital superstar’ and focus on building a collective skillset, visionary leadership and a culture of transformation that operates as an integrated ecosystem, rather than a top-down hierarchy.

George Bernard Shaw- ‘Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

We’ve come to the conclusion that people drive change at an organisational level, not the technology that they chose to deploy. Success in the cloud is therefore governed by a careful curation of skill, experience and ethos.

We’ve been talking to some of our clients about the process of cloud transformation- more specifically, how to implement a culture of positive change. Of course, great change management won’t be the only reason for the success of your cloud migration, but without the right combination of business transformation champions and leaders, the uptake of your new digital environment is at risk of failure.

A Cultural Shift

Achieving genuine workforce engagement is one of the single biggest challenges to digital transformation, the reality is humans don’t like change and they definitely don’t like leaving their comfort zone. When it comes to technology resistance there’s the added fear that increased automation will replace the their jobs.

Undoubtedly, when these kind of situations arise, having individuals with strong knowledge of legacy systems will help to bridge that gap between the old and new ways of working. Legacy skills are an essential component of thorough onboarding- helping to make new processes less daunting.

On a wider scale, companies can often neglect to address rewriting company culture, instead focusing on recruiting young digitally savvy talent. Doing this will only seek to ostracise other areas of the company, instead, the company ethos as a whole needs to change- becoming a digitally driven, data centric workforce who prides themselves on being future focused.

What we’re trying to say is that for many organisations, the lack of digital uptake can be linked back to a lack of company wide contribution, it would be a mistake to believe you could implement change from one dedicated task force and expect a transformation to ripple out.

Skilled Individuals

So once you’ve built your company culture- a place that supports new ways of working and positive change- it’s still vital to have skilled individuals who will support the vision you have for a digital future. As we continue to move away from legacy on premise systems, experience in cloud transformations continues to grow but that experience can still be hard to come by.

Despite the difficulty in finding experienced digital change leaders, they are an essential tool in communicating to both stakeholders and the wider business the direction that your company is headed in.

When recruiting, even at C-suite level, it’s incredibly important to have staff who understand the importance of data usage, are happy to make bold decisions and are adaptable to change. It’s important to mention here that most organisations use learning and onboarding tools to ensure upskilling is both provided for and tracked. At Konsolute our Virtual Academy

This combination of skilled individuals spread out throughout the business providing a blanket approach to transformation will avoid the dangers of top-down hierarchy or a siloed technical team. Essentially, the feeling of a bigger movement within your organisation in conjunction with a deep rooted change in ethos will likely sweep up even the most reluctant of employees.

Human Interaction in a Digital World

No matter how good your digital programme is, or how technically skilled your transformation champions are, great people skills are still an essential ingredient to a successful move to the cloud. Recruiting your business change advocates should be based around their ability to communicate clearly, convincingly and passionately.

Engaging others with the project, through the promotion of company values and culture will not only help internally but also help to attract the right kind of talent to accelerate your journey. Digital leaders, tech architects and data savvy analysts are drawn to forward thinking companies who see a future in tech- getting the ball rolling internally will undoubtedly help the recruitment of a quality workforce.

A Three Pronged Approach

So, to wrap up this piece on successful business change management, it seems that there are three key areas that are indispensable to great digital transformation. Making sure you have great leaders who can interact and prompt new ideas, prioritising onboarding skill development and the hiring of top talent and lastly but by no means least, Ethos, cultural shift, ensuring those foundations for change are embedded in your company roadmap.

If you’d like to talk to us about your digital transformation and how we can help support your business change managers in achieving their goals why not fire over an email? We’ve got a wealth of knowledge waiting for you.