The Achilles’ Heel of the Digital Era is…Us

Wow, so there we all were in early 2020, across the globe, slowly embracing digital (yes, some faster than others) and accepting that every aspect of our lives was going digital. But with the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital is now the “norm’. It’s how we are consuming content, buying products, and ordering meals and “party packs” (apparently these are a thing now!). At a time when physical connection has become impossible in many ways, digital businesses are enabling our lives and our connections in new ways. Though businesses in our global economy have sought to optimise supply chains, many assumed that call centres, and logistics and distribution centre operations were fine as they were. The human dependency for all of these could not be more visible than it is today. Now, people’s lives are impacted by whether or not they can quickly receive the products they order through digital channels, and businesses have had to adopt digital capabilities fast in order to adapt to new ways of working.

I was initially surprised –and later realised I should not have been – when seeing the breadth of this impact even on digital native businesses. Digital native firms were informing customers that the usually responsive customer service they provide would not be available as the call centre locations were closed. Equally laptop demand could not be met because so many firms were looking to specific markets that develop chip sets to keep costs as low as possible, this has impacted the availability of not only laptops, but servers and other digital-supporting infrastructure. Additionally, many businesses rushed to enable staff to work from home to minimise productivity losses whilst also seeking to implement security measures and the ability to measure staff performance. Rapidly doing this in the context of a crisis has proven a significant dilemma that is still ongoing for many businesses even today.

All of this goes to show that the current COVID-19 restrictions have demonstrated for any business looking to “be digital” that the human factor has proven to be the Achilles’ heel as evidenced by degradation in service, the impact on productivity and, in some cases, complete shut downs.

What is interesting to note is this type of global disruption does not usually sit high on the radar for digital transformation, transformation is usually about enabling the next wave of growth, not protecting existing business flows. The likelihood of there being a global pandemic is so rare that the need for a call centre to close, or for a distribution hub to ramp down, or for businesses to diversify their supply chain was near zero – until now. That said, the warnings about global pandemics have been shared with us previously, and particularly in a great 2015 TED Talk presentation by Bill Gates about how the next battle would not be on a field but actually in a Petri dish (yes, I am paraphrasing here). I’m sure the implications of this were never fully appreciated by many of us (me included).

So where are we now? Well, many people are talking about a “new normal”, where we will change the way we connect as humans and where digital enablement of businesses will occur faster than ever before. The diversification of supply chains, the virtualisation of call centres, and the permanent setup for work from home minimises future risks, but also potentially mitigates future costs as many businesses realise large offices may no longer be needed and instead just offer touch down zones when people “visit” from their home office.

I am not sure going to these extremes permanently is the right thing to do. Whilst I do encourage businesses to look at digital holistically so they can be ready for future impactful events, its important that we don’t lose sight of the most valuable aspect of being human: our ability to connect. This human connection is something that is feeling disrupted now and while Video calls are trying to fill the void, in my opinion they can never replace the real world value of connecting with others.

At M1, we had already started our digital transformation journey, though the path we set for ourselves is no longer about preparing for the future but also the new normal. Hence, we need to keep driving our transformation outcomes as fast as we can with the knowledge that the gradual transition we expected is likely to happen a lot faster than we thought. We must become a digital telco so that we can serve our customers, partners and our people in the best possible way. This doesn’t mean everything becomes driven by a machine – it means all our people are in roles that are adding value to our customers and to each other as colleagues. It means we are creating capabilities that strike the right balance between empowering our customers to live in the digital era with the right support tools; and ensuring that we leverage the value of human interaction where it makes sense.

When we exit these pandemic restrictions, we need to ensure that we do not end up with a mantra of digitalising all aspects of our lives. Instead, let’s make sure we are ready to respond when disasters strike so that businesses, governments and all of us as individuals can continue to be effective. In fact it is the collaboration across business, government and the public at large that can ensure we are aware, have the right framework to respond and people have the right working environments to continue to support our economy. We must always ensure though that any intervention, preparation or change in working environments, should always be temporary and that human connection is what will ensure digital adds value to our lives rather than meaning we spend the rest of our lives looking at screen(s).

Humans are the reason businesses exist - it's our needs that create demand and markets to serve. While many businesses will see the human factor as the  Achilles’ heel of digital – that is to say a dependency - when we look to the future let’s ensure that the Achilles’ heel  actually becomes the strength that allows us, businesses and the community to leap forward and see the true value of digital through human eyes, not machines. #staysafe #stayhealthy

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31956344

https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en 

Telkomtelstra - We are One!

It’s official. This little joint venture that went live in 2015 is now one year old! The day that we opened our doors to prospective customers, shared with them the immersive experience that they would have using our managed services through our Customer Experience Centre - and activated our first customer, is a day that will stay with me for a long time.

To have reached our launch day, it had already been an amazing journey from sitting in the basement of a hotel with a group of Telkom and Telstra folks asking ourselves what exactly this joint venture should look like. From those humble beginnings to get to where we are now is simply amazing.  It’s exciting to consider that since that first activation a year ago we have now contracted over 50 customers, recruited over one hundred employees and developed a suite of services across Managed Networks, Cloud Infrastructure and SaaS. All of this being built on a solely cloud enabled architecture across the operations and business systems, providing us with the ability to scale. However, equally important, was to ensure systems could be integrated and thus avoiding unnecessary rework or risk of inaccurate data.

I remain excited for the customer experience that we have been able to provide and the ongoing self-awareness that we can never stop improving our customer experience. We must always ensure that we hear the voice of our customers clearly.  The introduction of the telkomtelstra Infinity Portal has provided our customers with the first end-to-end view of the real time performance of their ICT services, in the form of an easy access web platform. I look forward to the day where we can leverage the value of Artificial Intelligence to inform customers, in a business language, of proposed actions, that seeks to continually improve their services. This means responding at a pace that will ensure ICT remains a business enabler for companies in an every changing economic landscape.

I am very proud to have been part of this team to establish a culture of collaboration, accelerated innovation and customer centricity. I am excited to see what the future holds for this joint venture – one which has overcome start-up challenges, sought to address customer challenges and provide both of its parents with a view into the possible, when it comes to Managed Services in Indonesia. I look forward to seeing telkomtelstra continue to set the standard on what managed services should be in a growth market like Indonesia. The validation of that is seen in the voice of our customers who remain our best advocates!

As a 1 year old, we have now learned to walk, we have had a few stumbles but we are on our feet. Now we are starting to show what we can do in a dynamic market like Indonesia and hopefully prove our value to both parents. My personal hope is that as managed services in markets like Indonesia over the years to come become more common, the market will continue to look to the likes of telkomtelstra as to what the next evolution of managed services could look like in these rapidly growing markets. So with that, I wish telkomtelstra a Happy Birthday and look forward to seeing it celebrate many more to come.

A Bridge Too Far

If you haven’t seen the film, it’s a classic and although the film is about a group of soldiers being dropped at a bridge further than they are supposed to, the part I relate most to business these days is the scene when they are asking what is on the other side of that bridge. No one knows, but someone is going to have to go over there. Of course no one wants to, but eventually a brave soul takes the steps to cross the bridge ready to try and blow up the bridge but fully expecting to be shot before they get there so he goes in with guns blazing. You will now be asking what does that have to do with people and technology. Put simply, the way we work can sometimes feel like that bridge too far.

In my own journey, I have worked in sales functions, led products and marketing teams and most recently, headed up operations – all disciplines that have a unique view on the business that they are tasked with supporting. From my time in sales, we focused on ensuring we could get the deal done and ask the products team to figure out how we build a product around it. In a products and marketing capacity, our focus was very much on understanding how we could best define the product and throw it over the wall to operations who will figure out how to build it. And in operations, it is the task of figuring out what has been requested and how this is going to actually work with the systems, tools and people a business currently uses. When an operations team then hands it back to sales – proud that they have been able to deliver the customer requirement with a marvelous “Ta-da it’s ready” to which sales may responds with a “That’s not what we asked for”. This is kind of like playing Chinese Whispers as a kid and giggling at how the message became so fragmented when it reached the start of the circle again. But in business we don’t tend to giggle – well not as much anyway!

For those of you familiar with the film “A bridge too far”, and equally familiar with these functions, you may be thinking a bridge crossing a river doesn’t do these differences justice. I would agree in fact that we sometimes view these as worlds apart instead of merely crossing a river. So let’s extrapolate this analogy. You aren’t merely trying to cross a bridge between functions, but actually we are asking people to don a spacesuit, board a rocket and cross a space bridge not knowing how they will be received on the other side or even if they will understand us. But don’t worry we are armed and dangerous with our own knowledge of how things should work in the business in order for us to do our job, right?

Start-up businesses provide a great learning for established businesses, in start-ups you simply don’t have a choice. You have to cross that bridge or otherwise see your start-up fail. And often in start-ups, it requires people who are working across functions in order to keep the business moving at pace. If the business loses momentum, market confidence can rapidly decline and in turn customers may be lost, resulting in a negative position for the business. Employees of a start-up have no fear because there is simply no time to be fearful or worry about how requirements will be misinterpreted. A start-up ensures these worlds overlap so as decisions are made quickly and together to ensure the business is on board with the outcome we are looking for.

I am sure there will be many of you out there thinking, but a start-up is easier they don’t have the scale we do, they don’t have the complexity of services and systems. Well who put that complexity there, or the systems that you are using? What if we could sit together and redefine what that way of working could look like? Forget who was the person who made the decision or who created the complexity, imagine a world where you could change the business model you work in, below are a few of my suggestions on how you can improve that collaboration.

Stop focusing on the customer and think about the one element you have in common no matter what your function is – the customer. It doesn’t matter if you are the lawyer, IT manager, finance manager, marketing manager or sales manager, this is the one aspect that any function will have in common. I would challenge anyone to identify a function that doesn’t impact a customer directly or indirectly. If you are going to say janitor then my answer is first impressions are everything – what if your customer visited a messy office or overflowing bins? What would that perception mean for your initial conversation?

Take a walk in the other team’s shoes – I will always remember a quote from my coach (you know who you are). In any discussion, no matter how much we disagree there will always be at least 10% truth in what the other person is saying. Pause for a moment and reflect on that concept, what could be that 10% from the other function, once you start there you may quickly find there is more truth or more importantly more alignment between your functions you are merely looking from different lenses toward the customer.

Define what is truly important. I am always amazed at the resolute stand we can make between functions to say we can’t change this or this is a deal breaker, with people left scratching their heads wondering where did that come from? Consider as a cross functional team what are key factors for success as well as failure for any activity undertaken. Agreeing these as a group provides guidance to a business and encourages ideation to be brought into a forum seeking to help realise the benefit vs. attending an episode of Dragons Den (Don’t know what it is … watch some of the video’s gulp!)

These are just a few examples based on my experience and I am sure there are many more suggestions from people out there, but the purpose of these examples is to get you thinking, looking out beyond your realm of influence and seize the opportunity.

What I am saying is this is a call for volunteers, volunteers to cross the bridge, unarmed, vulnerable and open to helping the other-side achieve their outcome with the knowledge of not what your world needs but what your world can provide. Take the leap and move to a role where you can challenge yourself to help another function succeed based on your diverse skills. In time, this bridge crossing will be two ways so when you are volunteering you will need to encourage others to follow your example and cross the bridge the other way. This mindset of adding value to encourage collaboration and ultimately drive the outcome the business is looking for namely sustainable growth and serving your customer, all of this resulting in a business realising that no bridge is too far. 

There be gold in them hills!

A new gold mine has been established, okay not a traditional one, but it is yellow at least! “Pokemon Go” has started a global craze similar to what we saw with games like “Angry Birds” and “Candy Crush”. It’s not uncommon to see people randomly walking around the streets or parks with their phones held up looking for monsters! So where is the gold in that you ask? Well how about the 200 million USD of Net Income that Nintendo saw from the game in just the month of July and this was even before the game opened up into some of the biggest gaming markets like China and Korea!

But this blog is not about Nintendo’s success – that is pretty evident. What I am more interested in is the amazing appearance of the ecosystem around “Pokemon Go”, which is very similar to the pop- up towns that appeared at a new gold rush location. The game itself has been running for roughly three months and, in that time, we now have dating applications so as you can hunt monsters with that someone special (seriously!), or get access to maps showing key locations where monsters hang out and even go to online stores where you can buy Pokemon clothing so you stand out when hunting for monsters. I didn’t realise until my kids were running around an airport that apparently Pokemon monsters are trying to now even board planes! 

We have truly moved into a digital era, one where entrepreneurial individuals are ready to respond to the latest craze and set up their own version of a bar, tailor, supply store or even more mature entertainment. Our world has clearly shifted from the physical to the virtual and these pop up ecosystems are testament to that. What is interesting though is that unlike the gold mining towns of old, these digital pop-up ecosystems will disappear faster and leave almost no evidence that they even existed. This is because the technology of our era has caught up with our childlike behaviour when it comes to our digital lives.

I think Bill Connolly said it best with “I want it now, I want it yesterday and stay awake because I will change what I want tomorrow!” We have always wanted immediacy and, as adults, we grow to accept and understand we can’t always have what we want. However, the digital world changed that with information, collaboration, games and shopping. Hence businesses have always been keen on capturing this market, but much like a child, our interests tend to be brief before we will move on with something else (don’t believe me? Well did you know the average use of an application you download is only 4-5 days? – brief indeed).

For businesses to be able to leverage this opportunity they need infrastructure to be available to spin up and spin down. They also need access to high speed connectivity to ensure their temporary services are always accessible and lastly they need to access both of these elements all over the world in order to ensure they benefit from the breadth of interest these opportunities bring albeit briefly.

Fortunately, our word has never been more connected and as such these pop up businesses can thrive profitably for short periods of time and then quickly pull back on the throttle when interest starts to wane. Of course there is no guarantee of success with these pop up businesses, but because of the elastic availability and pay-as-you-use commercial engagements, they can afford to fail and that confidence can help to increase a willingness to experiment with different types of services. Imagine if you tried to do that in a gold rush town – how many unused buildings or wasted supplies thrown out the back of the building as they tried to forget what hadn’t worked!

In today’s day and age it is all about the here and the now, and I believe it will become increasingly common to see businesses where there purpose is to build capability akin to running a short term project. Their success will also be determined by how long they can ride the coat tails of disruptive market developments by being agile and relevant and equally how many of these initiatives they can run in parallel before scale becomes a burden to their agility. The digital boom town has arrived and I am sure it won’t be long before we start seeing a map of the digital gold mines that exist in our newly created digital world to provide budding entrepreneurs with directions on how to find the nearest pop up town and set up their own shop. Ultimately, where there is gold, there is business to be done – albeit in the virtual hills!

Disruption Starts at Home

The word “Disruption” has become a powerful concept of many executives across all industries today as they seek to lead their businesses to growth in what is an increasingly competitive and ever-changing market for us all. However, what is interesting is that for many businesses it tends to be about the outward facing disruption – to disrupt key competitors with innovative services or commercial models, introducing new technologies particularly with a focus on digital.

As such, many businesses can be left frustrated because in their attempt to disrupt the market they can actually have hit the “destruct button” on themselves. Let me explain why….Disruption just sounds exciting right? Think about your next meeting and starting with, “Okay team, we need to disrupt the market to drive our next phase of growth!” I sincerely doubt there will be one person who will tell you that it sounds like a bad idea. Compare this with the concept of an alternative start to a conversation – “Okay team, we need to run some efficiency programs to cut costs and drive our next phase of growth!” Now if you are managing that team you may have people worried about being the target of that efficiency and, as such, you may end up with only a few murmurs of support.

Being disruptive relies on our employees

So why not turn that disruption initiative to be internally focused to drive employee satisfaction, business efficiency, margin improvements and who knows perhaps even customer growth? We tend to forget sometimes that it is the people of our organizations that actually makes it a business, who determine the culture of the way we work and most importantly, represent the business to our customers. If they cannot be positive about their place of work and products or services they offer, then what chance does your business have in seeing sustainable growth?

We are in an era of rapid innovation, where many aspects of our business can be digital in the way we work whether that is for collaboration, building products or solving customer problems. Many people look at their path to digitisation as simply being the next step of the evolution of their business, build an application, put more documents online, provide collaboration tools to staff and customers. However, these elements are more like the partial ingredients of a cake, and if the ingredients are not complete nor added with the right measures, the resulting changes can actually prove to be of detriment to the business.

A shift in how we operate

The path to digitisation within a business therefore needs to be looked at from a business disruption perspective, what will be the impact on people, processes and existing systems? A disruption in fact is where the digitisation can be the agent of change, but actually represents a fundamental shift in how the business operates. A disruption agenda in the market seeks to drive competitors to figure out how they will adapt to catch up with this change and the same can be said for an internal disruption – however positive it may be. Leaders will need to consider the broader impacts of this change on the way a business operates today and how digitisation will require a change in the way teams work as well.

This is where I believe it will be smaller businesses that will succeed at internal disruption faster as part of their path towards digitisation. The reason being is that smaller businesses can’t afford to customise, request developers to change their software or build something from scratch that fits their needs. Smaller businesses need to leverage available functionality and if that means a change in a process or the way a business operates then so be it. Smaller businesses are like speed boats. They may not have the scale to impact an industry as much as large businesses can, but it is a lot easier to change speed, direction and possibly even the shape of their business.

A large business on the other hand is more like an oil tanker as any decision taken will have an impact on the waters around that vessel and the wake it leaves can result in faraway beaches being impacted by unexpected waves. However the time it takes for decisions to actually have an impact can be a lot longer and therefore much like an oil tanker the route needs to be planned, impacts understood and the action plan to realise that outcome.

Digitisation of a business is no different and like an oil tanker many large businesses will believe they can simply use their weight to push for outcomes they are looking for so that the digital components they select work within their existing business model. This is much like asking a ship engine provider to simply strap the new engine into place where the old one used to be. We already know it wouldn’t work as the new engine will probably have different controls, interfaces, locking mechanisms and so on. Asking an engine provider to change all of these elements to simply fit in with the needs of the ship will most likely result in the engine not delivering the same output as was originally hoped and could actually mean the ship is worse off. You will therefore have simply paid for an expensive piece of hardware with no benefit to the business. Digitisation is very much the same, there are some exciting capabilities out there, but the more a business forces changes of the tools it uses the lesser the benefit that it will bring.

Digital disruption requires organisational change

Digital disruption can be a powerful tool for a business, as long as it is considered simply as that - a tool –  the broader change within the business needs people to engage in changing the processes, ways of working and evolving the culture of an organisation.

If your vision is delivering customer excellence that of course doesn’t change, but your goals as to how that is achieved may need to evolve. There are many partners that a business can work with in driving its own digital disruption, but I would recommend you consider for a moment that the functionality they are developing is based on understanding the needs of many businesses across our increasingly connected world. As such, if there is a feature or functionality that you are looking for that doesn’t exist, consider first if it is the  way you are running your business that needs to change BEFORE trying to customise the software thousands of other companies have been able to work with as is.

Now of course if we follow this journey on its natural course many will say “well, that’s all fine and good Nathan, but actually you have just found another name for business efficiency”. Efficiency which will still result in roles being lost or teams being made redundant. Of course this can always happen, but I believe this can actually be reduced, by digitising the workforce.

A shift to digital

A shift to digital doesn’t mean roles simply disappear, it means different types of roles are required, I am sure there will always be some roles that are made redundant, but that isn’t about becoming digital those are more to do with efficiencies within a business that most likely already needed to be changed. We live in a world where we have three unique working generations; those for whom email and mobile was the biggest development of their time, those for whom social media was a significant change and our youngest workforce where the perceived challenges are more about reverse integration into a business that doesn’t seem as technology driven as their personal lives.

Collaborating with different generations

I view these different generations as an exciting time because it will require all three groups to make any digital disruption possible, for the moment one of these groups doesn’t embrace the change then the disruption is doomed to fail. We need to ensure that we have diverse groups helping to define and evolve the digital capabilities of a business so as they are usable by all, for both internal and external customers. We need these groups to aid in the coaching and guiding of others in how to make the change from a user’s perspective and lastly we need to ensure we have the cross-functional engagement that no one is left behind. For this reason I view that more roles will be created and with training and encouragement it becomes more a change of role than an outright “your job has been replaced by a computer!”

Disruption remains an exciting concept and I believe when brought into the business and adopted as part of a change vehicle on the path to digitisation, it can drive significant business value. We tend to associate disruption with something that can have a market impact, which it definitely can, however having a business that can disrupt itself into driving change, that will lead to sustainable growth will ultimately establish a business that is then set to disrupt the market with a business able to support. This will be executed through creating a culture of collaboration, understanding and most importantly employee pride, because an organization that sees the value in the disruption it brings to itself will quickly become your biggest sales and marketing engine when it comes to disrupting beyond your businesses home.

Who's watching now?

With recent news topics covering the “standoff” between the FBI’s ask for access to `the San Bernadino Killers’ phone and Apple seeking to stand up and protect the privacy of its customers with concerns this could quickly become a default ask for all devices, ironically, I am getting a sense of déjà vu from almost 15 years ago when operators were facing the same debate.

15 years ago, governments and their security agencies were asking telecom operators to share their voice and data information for people deemed a security risk or to investigate a person’s activities prior to an event that happened - criminal or otherwise. At that point, the world was up in arms as to what this would mean for personal security or for that matter privacy as  governments were able to track what people were doing and where they were going.

However, over the years this has become a norm and, although not always accepted, a balance has been established where the operators report to the public on how many times they are asked to share information by the relevant government agency. What is interesting here is that this data is quickly becoming irrelevant as we move to digital and start to reduce our use of mobile platforms like traditional voice and SMS. With these traditional platforms, operators have had visibility of the activities of individual’s voice and messaging communications, whilst in our digital world all communications are increasingly moving to IP or Internet based services. This makes it incredibly difficult for operators to keep track, if they can keep track of the information at all.

I recognize that it is not only telecom operators being asked for end user information, but also the over-the- top players like Google, Apple and Facebook among others, and that they report on these regularly to the public. However, we need to recognize that there is increasingly ony one common source when it comes to telecom services, over-the-top services and other applications and that is simply our mobile phone. A little like our wallets used to be with our ID, credit card information, loyalty cards, receipts etc, with all of this now digital it is the mobile phone, which will increasingly become the centre of security discussions.

It is therefore not surprising that in recent surveys when people are asked what they would be most worried to lose the “mobile phone” is becoming increasingly prevalent[1], versus a decade ago when it was their wallet. The simple reason for this being we store more of our lives in our phones and online that anywhere else these days. Government agencies can approach credit card companies or operators and even online providers to ask for data about an individual, but the one area they are still trying to gain access to remains the phone. The documents, photos, message exchanges all have a common source instead of trying to debate access rights with all of the individual platforms.

I raise this because at some point the “national security” card will get played by government agencies and businesses could end up being forced to comply, similarly with what telecom operators have been through already. I would like to suggest to these handset manufacturers and over-the-top providers to start collaborating together about how they can protect the majority and isolate any handset access to be limited to individual cases. Perhaps there is a unique code that is created based on mutual compliance between the vendor and a government agency for an individual handset, that is to say avoiding sharing access to all phones through a generic override code or similar, which governments could then gain access to whenever they should so choose. In combination with this, then provide visibility to the public as to how many devices the government agency requested access to and how many devices they were given access to. Now this is just a suggestion and the important point here is for the digital community to think through a proactive approach of how they want to engage government agencies rather than being forced to comply with some all-encompassing banner of national security.

Our world continues to change and we need to remember that our lives, which were once paper-based, followed by analog and mobile, are now quite simply digital. Combine this with many governments that continue to fear what they don’t understand, the result is raising concerns on information that they believe exists, but are unable to see or control. In a digital world, where the data we create and store is growing exponentially every day, of course it is impossible to track absolutely everything. However, perception can quickly become reality, as governments and their associated agencies will continue to want to gain further visibility of our digital lives. So, we either act proactively and educate through defining an engagement model which protects the majority of people and addresses data sharing when only absolutely critical for the protection of society, or digital businesses will rapidly become the victims after a few cases under the banner of “National Security” become common place.

I appreciate this is a fine balance and many people will be unhappy with the idea of giving up privacy of our personal items, some will say this must be defended at all costs, but there are precedents already and I fear simply defending will result in a outcome none of us are happy with. I for one would rather know there is an understanding between digital providers and governments as to how this will be managed in the future before it becomes a case of turning on my phone or tablet and asking myself the question “Who’s watching me now?”

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[1] http://blog.zixcorp.com/2014/09/survey-says-individuals-would-rather-lose-wallet-than-mobile-device/

Ctrl-Alt-Del

We all know what happens when we press ’Ctrl-Alt-Del’ on our keyboards – well, at least I hope you do, otherwise you may find this article rather uninteresting (now, I know a few of you just checked by doing it, so welcome back to the story). When we perform this ‘three button miracle’, we get to see the task manager, i.e all of the active applications we see on our laptop. Imagine for a moment, that you have closed all of those active applications and you are left with a desktop with no activity. Would you continue your work by simply reopening what you closed, or would you think about how you would do things differently?

In today’s “digital world”, we are increasingly comfortable to evolve our collaboration choices, social media, applications for our phone (yes, both for fun and the more serious activities). This is often because there is a better tool for us to use, or the tools we have aren’t working in the right way, or we simply want a change. Interestingly though, most of us don’t do this in our business environments. Think for a minute and ask yourselves, “Why do we do the ‘Ctrl-Alt’Del’ magic combination”? Perhaps our application isn’t working, or our PC or tablet is running slow? Are we worried that our device is stuck within a loop and can’t move forward from? Now, consider the business environments we work in. These reasons can seem very similar, yet our response tends to be a shrug of the shoulders and we continue to push through.

As you read this, consider for a moment that you could ‘Ctrl-Alt Del’ your business. Take a moment to pause and reflect on what is working, and think about whether your processes, systems and tools are doing what you need them to do? Which ones are consuming too much time or resource? As you reflect, you may also sense a glimmer of hope – that idea that pops into your head of the “What if?.

However. then the reality of how complicated or hard it can be leaps to the front again and the hope is gone. I encourage you to force that “What if” concept back to the front just for a moment – let it breathe and consider a minor application or toolset in your business that could be changed with minimal effort and would help your business start to realise the impact a pause and change could have on your organisation.

Of course, many of you will say, “But Nathan, we are already doing this we, are going through significant change as the market evolves”, or “We have tried it before and ended up in the same place”. I tip my hat to those who have not only achieved a rethink, but equally to those who are continuing to try. Without this commitment to change, then businesses will continue to plod through using what they have.

In essence, businesses can’t simply pause and then create a change. It needs to be embraced by the leaders of organisations. Congratulating one another for doing something new, without understanding how to create the right environment for it to be continually successful will simply doom it to failure. One such example was for a start-up business unit which was a business’s efforts to pause and use a fresh approach to change direction for an area of their business where they were being challenged by competitors.

I was fortunate enough to have a discussion with the start-up business unit, working under a large parent company the other day (no, not mine!), where they were being given conflicting direction – “Go forth and conquer this market as a disruptive player!”. Sounds great, right? However, this was followed by the second part of the conversation – “You must of course remain within the architecture and capabilities of the parent business so as we maximise our assets”. Now, after being ready to jump for joy, I was left staring into my coffee cup hoping that my disappointment for their predicament didn’t show. Unfortunately, this is very common for many incumbent businesses seeking to jump on the start-up bandwagon, without truly understanding the changes they need to make in their own thinking when considering what they set out to achieve.

In the case of this business unit start-up, that change from the parent company needs to be in giving them the opportunity to be disruptive or accepting that the goal in establishing the business unit is to disrupt the broader organisation. The latter would require some serious commitment, and a jump off a sizable cliff given the risks it may be perceived to have within the business, particularly as in many large established businesses, the employees are the culture, and they represent the way of working – hence changing this overnight can be challenging.

In this case, providing that new business unit the flexibility to define its market approach, its IT architecture and ultimately its culture will help to define its success. Of course, we can say “But what if it fails?” At least, if it stays within the way of working of the parent company then the assets and people can be reintegrated into the business”. If this is your thinking, then I’m afraid you will never know what success could look like. We don’t see business start-ups wondering about how they might mitigate failure, but how can then create the best chance for success.

“Hackathons” are a great example of how businesses can create the best chance for success, and to date have always been synonymous with technology led businesses, and in particular start-up environments. The idea of throwing a problem into a room with some really bright people to design and develop with a new widget or code to address a bug in a platform is increasingly common. I would however propose that hackathons become the tool of choice for our ‘Ctrl-Alt-Del’ moment.

Once we pause our business, what are we going to do? How do we ensure we don’t go back to our old ways of working? How do ensure our staff embrace this change with us? In any organisation, there are lots of bright people in their field who are keen to get more involved and with the right tools, they can have  a phenomenal impact on helping to improve the way a business achieves its objectives. The people that make up an organisation want their business to be successful; it’s what makes it a great place to work, so leveraging their commitment and channeling that willingness to succeed through these types of tools can create a great environment for change.

This for me is why leaders really need to ‘Ctrl-Alt-Del’ their businesses and have a serious think about the way they are running their organisations. Can it be done differently? Yes, I hear some of you saying –  it is simply impossible to change your business given how long you have been working in that way, but I say give your teams a chance to embrace change, a change made of their own interest, engagement and outcome. It might start small – from how a team collaborates, or how you engage with your customers, but ultimately if it gets the business thinking about the “possible”, then that can only be a good thing … right?

We built a house!

Ok, so it’s not a physical house but we have built a new business in Indonesia. I can tell you, having previously seen my first home being built, it feels very much the same.  In any construction there are a number of key factors to consider; managing the timelines for the project, ensuring contractors don’t blow out the budget (this is a biggie), adapting to the required changes as we learn what works best and above all ensuring the customer is happy with the outcome. In the case of my first home, my customer was my wife, and in the case of building this business, our customer was the Indonesian market.

When building this business or “digital house” as I call it, we learned there are a lot of great technologies in existence that can be leveraged to build a business’ operations and business systems. And for anyone that knows me, exploring these new technologies was like placing a kid in a candy store and giving them some money to fill a basket – don’t worry I was well behaved, for the most part.

Ironically though, I don’t believe it is the strength of our technology that will drive the right outcome for our digital house, but more so the less predictable elements that will define the successful build of our house - quirky people! Whilst quirky people are not necessarily sought to build a physical house  –in the event the bathroom may end up in the kitchen and a shower in the study – we were fortunate to have some amazing people on this project. It wasn’t just their knowledge that assisted us, but their ability to think outside of the box, and consider the unusual and unconventional ways to approach the deliverables for this unique program. Simply put, they needed to be quirky!

There were a lot of unknowns in the building of this house –  from how we could integrate into the local operator’s business and operating systems and avoiding significant upfront investment to ensuring we were compliant to local market regulatory policies. Importantly we also needed to ensure that whatever we built would support the business’ key goal in serving our customers in a new and differentiated way.

I can appreciate anyone who has worked in a start-up before will be thinking, ”well Nathan, as a start-up that’s pretty straight forward and common”. However, I would ask you to consider that this is a joint venture between two incumbents that were running successful businesses in a prescribed way for a long period of time with clear views on how they felt the business should be established. This isn’t in line with a common start-up model.

The approach we took therefore may have appeared normal for a tech start-up, but for two incumbents it was a leap of faith to change the approach in addressing these challenges, whist driving the outcome that would enable a new business to grow. It wasn’t possible to simply run through a check list – what we needed was people who would adapt to the changing landscape as we learned more about the market and business environment we were operating in, and challenge what was possible (or equally not viable) and what was needed to adapt to the needs of the local operator.

What was imperative in building this digital house was the need to change our way of thinking, focusing on quick outcomes in small steps, empowering our teams and accepting that failure could and would happen.  It is very easy to slip into an approach of “that’s what we have always done” as a reason as to why we shouldn’t try something different, I can’t count the number of people who were happy to tell us “that won’t work”, or “you can’t do it that way”.

This is where we get to the next critical factor - you need people that are committed, and almost stubborn, to ensure that they stay true to the journey that is being defined. You also need an understanding boss who will give you the flexibility to pull this together without losing faith in what we are able to achieve (thanks Boss!). There were times when we would question ourselves – “are we doing the right thing?”, and “should we back off and simply accept that near enough is good enough”. I am glad we didn’t as the outcomes we have started to realise are down to that commitment to the goal.

Equally, the team knew we would not make all the right bets to address both our current and future requirements. As such, we needed to make sure that we had some flexibility moving forward. By taking a cloud platform approach to all the technologies that we introduced offered us the flexibility to evaluate functionality, without feeling we were committed to the tools that we were using in the long term. Yes, there would be a revised integration effort if we changed out an element of our architecture. However, that was better than being stuck with a physical platform for five to seven years that we would have to keep customising to the point that it could no longer be changed out without a complete new build.

 The cloud approach has also meant that our costs for the platforms are directly correlated with the growth of the business. Yes, there is a case of initial capacity, however this is minor compared with the scale we can grow these platforms to as demand increases. Lastly, the hybrid nature of our cloud environment, which extends from Indonesia across international markets, ensures that we can be compliant to evolving regulatory requirements in Indonesia whilst leveraging the benefits of different cloud platforms.

Another key aspect has been the way that we have engaged our suppliers. Every conversation has started with, “how do you interface into other systems?”, “what use cases can you share about that integration”, and “what best practices have driven the development of your systems?” The reasons for these questions were because we knew that to maximise the value of the technology we were using, it was more important to have systems that would naturally talk to each other and had done so before, versus our own team having to build a system to translate between two systems – as if we were trying to help translate between two completely different languages.

To this end, it became clear to us we were building a “digital ecosystem” or a collection of technology partners that would need to interoperate to ensure we could serve our customers in a valued and differentiated way. This ecosystem may evolve over time as we find different technologies that will help us serve more effectively in the future. Fortunately, by remaining true to the approach the team has taken, will help to ensure all new members of the ecosystem understand the requirement for interoperability.

We have now established a Service Provider in Indonesia with no network assets, nor any voice infrastructure. Admittedly, we have had to build a private cloud to meet local market criteria, however the majority of our technology is cloud based. We are developing a culture where the teams succeed or fail together, and where we do fail, we fail fast, dust ourselves off, understand why we fail and then move forward again – but always as one team.

We are also now serving customers and gearing up to expand our portfolio, but the house is clearly built. To that end, in building our digital house; the operating license is our foundation, our walls are the tools, platforms and processes we have created, the roof is the governance we use to always make sure there are no leaks in what we have built, the windows our experience centre to show customers a view of what we can provide, and the interfaces connecting our systems together is the cabling. We can now see where we need to improve the house - where the walls need finishing and where the roof needs to be maintained, but none the less we now have a house!

However, our digital house is still just a shell. It’s the people who work in it that are making the digital house our digital home, and ultimately will be the ones who welcome our customers and partners in as we seek to change the customer experience and serve the Indonesian market with our version of kopi and thee.

This article is dedicated to the Implementation team from the past year that had the patience to work with us, the passion to drive us to complete our goals and never accept near enough as good enough. We recognized that this success will always be bigger than any one person and that we all should reflect on the role we played in realising the building of this house. I would especially like to thank the team for putting up with my crazy ideas, passionate discussions and occasional singing in the corridor!