What is your experiences navigating through complex and complicated stakehoder management (especially without direct reporting relations, and mostly upwards to ELT-1 level) to get your digital supply chain transformation agenda across and endorsed? What has worked, what did not (and why) and what did you learn along the way?
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Department manager IT Planning20 days ago
We are in the midst of this journey, a 3 years roadmap.We also needed several discussions with our top-management to get the funding and poriority protection, even in budget cutting/priority setting exercises. Some crucial elements;
1. Review of independent SCM business consultance party to screen the AS-IS situation and providing a recommendation report & benchmark against best in class in our Industry.
2. Discuss the Change management aspects up-front with the different internal/external business stake-holders showing the broader picture but also what's particular is in it for them
3. Clear business case including 8 KPI's improvement targets and explanation why our roadmap will contribute to those, also including actions out of IT scope.
4. Brake-down the whole roadmap in different steps/Milestones and do intermediate reporting alongside this in the form of a Newsletter.
5. To also sever intermediate measurement of the KPI's change and dare to pauze and improve before continuing to the next step, as such gaining trust of top management that you are serious with Cost/merit
VP of Supply Chain in Transportation16 days ago
Great question. Here are a few lessons learned and suggestions in response to your question.1) Rely on personal power and influence, not positional power, and develop strategic alliances with other stakeholders to garner buy-in and drive consensus.
2) When developing your business case, always eliminate subjectivity from the conversation. Instead, focus on including data, facts, and objective evidence to support your proposals.
3) In The face of initial resistance, it's important not to give up. Instead, seek feedback on how to better inform key stakeholders and solicit input on what is needed to prioritize your digital agenda.
4) Do not be too narrow; demonstrate how your supply chain technology ecosystem improvements, digital capabilities, expanded digitization, and business priorities align with the organization's overarching strategy.
5) Develop a formal technology roadmap that visualizes the path forward, explaining the benefits and potential ROI.
6) Nurture synergies across functions and departments to engage other stakeholders and business leaders in leveraging their own intelligence, business, and technology acumen and advisory guidance in formulating a strong business case.
To this end, I know that going into it is not a one-and-done situation. It may require persistence, refining your approach, and strengthening the business case. Also, from direct experience, it is an issue of timing. Present the justification prior to the fiscal budget setting process so that ELT can include allocation of funds or approve the budget to pursue some if not all of the recommendations.
Over the last 10 years I have supported some large multinationals transform capabilities, in some instances going from "analogue" to digital and in others, building up capability that only existed in powerpoint at first. All of them suffered from one of the biggest negatives in winning support - overpromising.
Almost without fail overpromising is the root of many projects failing or being slow to deliver results. There are many reasons for it but perhaps the biggest callout is to be aware of the tendency to mistake enthusiasm for impact when articulating the reasons the project should be funded by ELT.
Lack of coalition and consensus is another blocker. If you work in a multinational the decision-making culture is important. My experience is that most MNCs are bottom up consensus driven. If an ELT member or their -1s are expected to "make a decision" they will tend to make them if they are convinced the project is viable based on its fit to strategy and crucially, the view from those reporting to them, that the benefits and outcomes have been tested and can be banked.
Scale and pace What is being made digital and why? There is a level of mythology around some of the promises of digitalisation, being practical and realistic about what will change, when it will change and what comes next on the change roadmap builds confidence, support and ultimately speed.
What works? Bring joined up thinking to the table, collect support from cross functional stakeholders and have them participate in the vision setting for the work. As a case begins to take shape outline the requirements from each function needed to make it work and be realistic, get committed support for those inputs and take it to a likely set of sponsors. Having more than one voice at the ELT submission is vital, it may seem obvious but how many times have you seen politics wipe out good thinking because wider support was not built in?
Focus on the fundamentals, if your organisation has enjoyed major project success in the past build into your plan the ideas that made them successful. If like many large organisations big projects are challenging, build up a cohesive set of building blocks and mitigations from known technical or cultural risks. Examples in digital projects would be the usability of the data, the existing processes and a clear headed perspective that new tech does not solve old data and old process problems. Then invest in change and adoption - this is too often underinvested and under supported. The small relative investment here is dwarfed by the cost of project failure and restarts.
I appreciate there are only a few points here and as always a community will always have different points of view, hopefully the notes will be useful as part of your planning. I look forward to seeing what others in the community add to the discussion.