Before you think I am off to Disney to design rides or other attractions – which would be a very cool job, by the way - I am not referring to Disney’s coining of the term, re their designers needing to be able to engineer what they are coming up with in the latest amazing customer or digital experience (interesting side note, whilst Disney own the trademark to Imagineering, it was not the first to use this term[1]). I am instead talking about how this concept is now moving into mainstream digital businesses as they seek to compete in an ever-changing world.
The drive toward Digital is changing our business culture and our business resourcing needs like never before. The era of Digital businesses has provided opportunities to create and evolve internal and external facing business capabilities to improve efficiencies, whilst at the same time as the need for businesses to establish digital capability has become a necessity to compete. Simply outsourcing or partnering the development of digital capabilities is no longer a viable option because the ability for businesses to adapt and evolve within dynamic market(s) at a cost they can afford means the profile of roles within and equally those outsourced is shifting.
The era of having roles that are specifically shaped as those who define their requirements (business users) and those who implement those requirements (IT) is coming to an end. With rogue IT being greater than ever (Business units looking to establish their own IT capability), the need for the model to shift couldn’t be more important. Why? Well simply put, when each part of a business looks to do its own thing we lose sight of who is accountable for stitching the various components together. Not to mention the impact of competing priorities, insular or siloed benefit realisation and the misalignment of resources not working together to achieve the greater good.
Enter the Imagineer, a new species of employee who not only has a clear vision for the business that he/she works in but also has an understanding of the tools/platforms/software that their business uses now and in the future. This new role profile will not only help to reimagine what a particular part of the business looks like, they will also have an understanding and an accountability to ensure that whatever they create actually works with a business’s broader organisation. For example in this role they make it possible for marketing tools to work with a Customer management platform, or an ordering system to communicate with billing. This may seem obvious but history tells us our traditional ways of working have created extensive human glue as we seek to create the best widget to solve a particular problem instead of seeking to understand the broader business implications of decisions we may make in isolation from other parts of the business.
The Imagineer has a “T” shaped understanding of the business, an understanding of the end-to-end architecture and business flows combined with an in-depth knowledge on a particular domain with both the business requirements and expertise on how the software they will use works. The result being a common understanding of how teams can succeed together and realise ownership and innovation in their part of the business at the same time.
I see this in my current role where we are exposing business people to the systems that will form the future of our business with an ask of them to know and manage those systems/tools in the future. It is not as easy a transition as having a traditional define and deliver model (Business vs. IT) for many years and then hope we will change the model overnight. It just doesn’t happen that easily, changing the model requires mindsets and behaviours of those involved to also change. The exciting aspect of this is the journey, partnering with our business owners who are keen to embrace this change and also become Imagineers themselves as we seek to redefine the customer, partner and employee experience in a newly imagined digital world.
Being an Imagineer is merely an example of where the collision of worlds from business and IT will create new opportunities. These new roles are merely a representation of the shift that all businesses have made, where items are increasingly less about hardware and more about software, where services are no longer bought they are leased. The traditional barrier of business and IT is dissolving rapidly; I am not talking about start-ups but mainstream businesses where those who are going to be successful will need to have a blend of expertise
Imagineers will become a new role in our Digital Era, a role where people are needing to not only understand the technology and tools they are leveraging but also to have the vision of what the future can hold when we reimagine a digital world, a world where the limitations are only defined by our imaginations. It is this world I am excited to work in and bring an understanding to business leaders on the art of the possible through ImagineeringTM, where the knowledge of system and tool capabilities combined with a vision for what the future can hold will empower business to disrupt themselves and remain relevant for the future.
To that end, I will sign off.
Nathan Bell
Dreamer, Technology enthusiast, Digital Imagineer.
