Time will tell if the CDO is the White Knight, or next Career-Is-Over Victim
It’s still early days for the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) role. At first glance, it might seem to be a rebadging of the CIO’s or CTO’s job, but maybe it’s something quite different, possibly more like a business architect or transformation consultant. Is it a permanent or transient role?
Here’s a perspective on what CDO might do, drawn from my experience in a traditional bricks-and-mortar firm, with over 100 years of history:
The CDO lives and breathes the business vision: he or she shapes and re-shapes the vision and in parallel, makes it reality
The CDO keeps a finger on the pulse of the current business ‘Center of Gravity’ and is ready to adapt to changing business circumstances.
The CDO must be comfortable with uncertainty and, at the same time, be able to establish projects that deliver incremental change; he or she is always searching for ‘no regrets’ increments that act as proof-points for hypotheses and strategies. Such projects are designed to cope with the many Rumsfeldian ‘Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns’, the blockers for decision-making, and the often quoted excuses for inactivity.
The CDO’s projects and programs are designed, from the outset, with regular course-correction in mind. The CDO must also be prepared to make more radical changes in direction: pivoting strategy to take advantage of emerging opportunities or combat new threats.
The CDO role walks the fine line between management consultant and technologist
The CDO is a master of business change first, and a technologist second. That said the CDO must be adept at spotting useful technology-based patterns, and encourage experimentation: new uses and sources of data, the tools to manipulate or visualize it, and new technical design patterns that suit the highly distributed, autonomous digital world.
The CDO is a passionate fundraiser for, nimble, ‘safe-fail’, projects that encourage bold ideas and nurture innovation.
The CDO is also a champion of architectures that design in the expectation of change from the outset. The days of the Big Up Front Design are over. Digital strategies must embrace the notion of organic, emergent behavior. CDOs with an appreciation of economics, complexity science, and systems theory will have a distinct advantage. They understand that the digitally enabled world is, by nature, adaptive. The old, deterministic, thinking behind traditional ‘ERP-like’ systems, are too fragile, ponderous, and closed-loop in nature. They simply don’t work in a world of massive-scale dynamic interactions between people and their digital agents.
The CDO thinks about: values, trust, services, information, and technology – in that order
The CDO should be able to deliver concise distillations of complex matters. He or she must be a great communicator: an engaging and ‘trust-winning’ storyteller and consummate networker. CDOs don’t necessarily have to be the smartest person in the room. They surround themselves with a strong network of innovators and experts. They possess strong facilitation and active-listening skills, they nurture and amplify ideas and insights from others.
The CDO assesses the impact of the democratization of data, information and knowledge
Today, everyone in the business has a duty to become tech-savvy; those who aren’t will soon become sidelined. So a large part of the CDO’s role is as a coach in technology-literacy. He or she also encourages his colleagues to think about the ‘What’ before the ‘How’ to avoid the rush-to-solution pitfall.
CDOs are also naturals at abstraction who can focus attention on the value-delivering services required. Above all, they champion the dissemination of data, information, and knowledge, internally and externally. This requires regular context switching between stakeholders’ perspectives: those of customers, shareholders, regulators and other ‘duty-of-care’ communities.
‘Going Digital’ affects the whole organization: front, mid and back office. The CDO is a passionate silo-buster; a joiner-of-dots. He or she has a strong grasp of Enterprise Architecture and how to balance pragmatism and short-term goals with the longer-range: stakeholder values, organizational & technology structure, business services portfolio, and their lifetime Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). He works hand-in-hand with the CEO, CMO, COO, CIO and other C-levels to minimize ‘initiative’ misalignment.
What the CDO isn’t
Maybe the best way to describe the CDOs role is to say what it isn’t:
- A technology cost-center director
- A marketing/communications director
- A corporate strategist
- A project/program director
- An IT architect
- A compliance specialist
- A cyber security specialist
- An industrial engineer/BPM expert
- A business analyst
- A data scientist
- A social media/web/mobile channel expert.
The CDO must have a well-rounded knowledge of the above disciplines. He or she, however, works with subject experts to make business change happen: herding them all towards the new digital Business-as-Usual.
The CDO is expected to see the world through a fresh pair of eyes and be an agent of change; he weaves ‘digital’ mindfulness into the fabric of the business and its customers and suppliers. His or her mission is to implant, and then grow, an enterprise-wide, data-rich nervous system, which will allow the business to compete by making best use of its digital and physical assets.
I’m sure there are many CIOs and CTOs out there who would claim they’re already acting in that role. In the end, of course, the label doesn’t matter – it’s all about the outcomes.
The question is: will the aspirations of this role prove too challenging for ‘CDOs’ within traditional business? Will the brave individuals in this role become yet another victim of ‘career-is-over’ mentality born from businesses’ frustration with all things ‘IT’?
Business leaders and managers must wake-up to the fact that their world is now digital. They can’t expect an individual to somehow sprinkle ‘digital foo-foo dust’ over the business and believe all will be well. Those companies that are so-called born-digital (Amazon, Google and others) get this. They know that everyone in the business, from the CEO down, is in part a ‘CDO’.
I suspect the CDO position might indeed be transitory. Those companies that truly understand the scale of the transformation will succeed by embedding ‘digital’ in the corporate mindset, and most importantly within the decision-making of the executive team. Those that don’t, will play lip-service to the role until they fall back into old habits: ‘it’s that IT guy’s fault’ blame-game (regardless of how many times we say the CDO isn’t an ‘IT’ role).
Or worse, they wake up too late; asleep while the world changed, their customers took their digital agents to play elsewhere.
This article draws on the author’s experience of working, over the past 8 months, with a ‘Digital Transformation’ director in the Energy sector.
Have the business leaders and managers in your organisation taken ownership of their digital environment? Or can we expect the CDO (or a “CDO like” role) to become a permanent fixture in many organisations?
How will TV and digital video converge and who will take the bulk of the value?
By Ross DawsonWhile news-on-paper is on the way out, it appears to be quite a different story for TV. The TV industry globally is challenged in a variety of ways, however revenues in the US remain resilient, as shown in this chart.
Source: LUMA’s The Future of (Digital) TV
Digital video has exploded over the last 8 years however that has, in the main, being a complement to TV, with TV viewing eroding surprisingly slowly compared to earlier forecasts.
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CDO: Consultant, Fund Raiser, Change Agent, Technologist
By Nigel GreenTime will tell if the CDO is the White Knight, or next Career-Is-Over Victim
It’s still early days for the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) role. At first glance, it might seem to be a rebadging of the CIO’s or CTO’s job, but maybe it’s something quite different, possibly more like a business architect or transformation consultant. Is it a permanent or transient role?
Here’s a perspective on what CDO might do, drawn from my experience in a traditional bricks-and-mortar firm, with over 100 years of history:
The CDO lives and breathes the business vision: he or she shapes and re-shapes the vision and in parallel, makes it reality
The CDO keeps a finger on the pulse of the current business ‘Center of Gravity’ and is ready to adapt to changing business circumstances.
The CDO must be comfortable with uncertainty and, at the same time, be able to establish projects that deliver incremental change; he or she is always searching for ‘no regrets’ increments that act as proof-points for hypotheses and strategies. Such projects are designed to cope with the many Rumsfeldian ‘Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns’, the blockers for decision-making, and the often quoted excuses for inactivity.
The CDO’s projects and programs are designed, from the outset, with regular course-correction in mind. The CDO must also be prepared to make more radical changes in direction: pivoting strategy to take advantage of emerging opportunities or combat new threats.
The CDO role walks the fine line between management consultant and technologist
The CDO is a master of business change first, and a technologist second. That said the CDO must be adept at spotting useful technology-based patterns, and encourage experimentation: new uses and sources of data, the tools to manipulate or visualize it, and new technical design patterns that suit the highly distributed, autonomous digital world.
The CDO is a passionate fundraiser for, nimble, ‘safe-fail’, projects that encourage bold ideas and nurture innovation.
The CDO is also a champion of architectures that design in the expectation of change from the outset. The days of the Big Up Front Design are over. Digital strategies must embrace the notion of organic, emergent behavior. CDOs with an appreciation of economics, complexity science, and systems theory will have a distinct advantage. They understand that the digitally enabled world is, by nature, adaptive. The old, deterministic, thinking behind traditional ‘ERP-like’ systems, are too fragile, ponderous, and closed-loop in nature. They simply don’t work in a world of massive-scale dynamic interactions between people and their digital agents.
The CDO thinks about: values, trust, services, information, and technology – in that order
The CDO should be able to deliver concise distillations of complex matters. He or she must be a great communicator: an engaging and ‘trust-winning’ storyteller and consummate networker. CDOs don’t necessarily have to be the smartest person in the room. They surround themselves with a strong network of innovators and experts. They possess strong facilitation and active-listening skills, they nurture and amplify ideas and insights from others.
The CDO assesses the impact of the democratization of data, information and knowledge
Today, everyone in the business has a duty to become tech-savvy; those who aren’t will soon become sidelined. So a large part of the CDO’s role is as a coach in technology-literacy. He or she also encourages his colleagues to think about the ‘What’ before the ‘How’ to avoid the rush-to-solution pitfall.
CDOs are also naturals at abstraction who can focus attention on the value-delivering services required. Above all, they champion the dissemination of data, information, and knowledge, internally and externally. This requires regular context switching between stakeholders’ perspectives: those of customers, shareholders, regulators and other ‘duty-of-care’ communities.
‘Going Digital’ affects the whole organization: front, mid and back office. The CDO is a passionate silo-buster; a joiner-of-dots. He or she has a strong grasp of Enterprise Architecture and how to balance pragmatism and short-term goals with the longer-range: stakeholder values, organizational & technology structure, business services portfolio, and their lifetime Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). He works hand-in-hand with the CEO, CMO, COO, CIO and other C-levels to minimize ‘initiative’ misalignment.
What the CDO isn’t
Maybe the best way to describe the CDOs role is to say what it isn’t:
The CDO must have a well-rounded knowledge of the above disciplines. He or she, however, works with subject experts to make business change happen: herding them all towards the new digital Business-as-Usual.
The CDO is expected to see the world through a fresh pair of eyes and be an agent of change; he weaves ‘digital’ mindfulness into the fabric of the business and its customers and suppliers. His or her mission is to implant, and then grow, an enterprise-wide, data-rich nervous system, which will allow the business to compete by making best use of its digital and physical assets.
I’m sure there are many CIOs and CTOs out there who would claim they’re already acting in that role. In the end, of course, the label doesn’t matter – it’s all about the outcomes.
The question is: will the aspirations of this role prove too challenging for ‘CDOs’ within traditional business? Will the brave individuals in this role become yet another victim of ‘career-is-over’ mentality born from businesses’ frustration with all things ‘IT’?
Business leaders and managers must wake-up to the fact that their world is now digital. They can’t expect an individual to somehow sprinkle ‘digital foo-foo dust’ over the business and believe all will be well. Those companies that are so-called born-digital (Amazon, Google and others) get this. They know that everyone in the business, from the CEO down, is in part a ‘CDO’.
I suspect the CDO position might indeed be transitory. Those companies that truly understand the scale of the transformation will succeed by embedding ‘digital’ in the corporate mindset, and most importantly within the decision-making of the executive team. Those that don’t, will play lip-service to the role until they fall back into old habits: ‘it’s that IT guy’s fault’ blame-game (regardless of how many times we say the CDO isn’t an ‘IT’ role).
Or worse, they wake up too late; asleep while the world changed, their customers took their digital agents to play elsewhere.
This article draws on the author’s experience of working, over the past 8 months, with a ‘Digital Transformation’ director in the Energy sector.
Have the business leaders and managers in your organisation taken ownership of their digital environment? Or can we expect the CDO (or a “CDO like” role) to become a permanent fixture in many organisations?
10 Major Trends for Micro to Mid-Sized Business
By Ross DawsonBy Ross Dawson
I was recently asked by the office supplies chain Officeworks to create a list of trends for micro to mid-sized business, which they used in a promotional campaign, matching relevant products from their offerings with my trends. Here are the 10 trends:
From HQ to CQ
It is not just micro-businesses that are increasingly using co-working spaces. Mid-sized businesses are also using them to shift from an HQ ‘Headquarters’ mentality to a CQ ‘Connected Quarters’ approach in which they seek talent, ideas, community and customers as well as giving their workers flexibility. Co-working spaces are perfect to help talented staff work in an attractive space but avoid unnecessary commuting, to set up branches in other cities, and to connect into the communities that will drive your business forward.
Data-Driven Self-Perfection
A whole new generation of technology is allowing us to track every aspect of our lives, with many Australians discovering that they enjoy and get real value from these deeply personal insights. Business owners have always been immensely motivated to be at their very best. Now that they are able to gather data on their work, exercise, food and sleep, they are using what they learn to improve their performance in every aspect of their lives.
Lightning Gratification
Speed is the name of the game. As the world has accelerated over the last years and decades, people’s patience has eroded to the point of vanishing. Customers now expect gratification will be almost simultaneous with their desires. Service is expected not just during normal business hours but sometimes to all hours of the day, and product delivery is anticipated to be close to instantaneous. Companies need to be good at managing customers’ expectations, but they also need to learn how to respond like greased lightning.
Big Data For Small Business
‘Big Data’ – gathering immense amounts of information to improve performance – is top of the agenda for massive companies like banks, supermarkets and utilities. Now small business is able to seize the opportunity, using similar tools to fine-tune and grow their companies. Applications range from predicting what customers are most likely to buy next or micro-tracking the success of marketing campaigns through to rostering staff when they are most productive. Using these kinds of tools can help smaller business sneak ahead of larger, less nimble competitors.
Your Unique 3D Print
Personalisation is moving to the centre of business, with customers expecting to get unique, customised products, and the companies who can offer that leaping ahead. The rise of 3D printing is a major tool allowing these new services to emerge. Manufacturers and designers can create instant prototypes, marketers are creating startling new approaches, and we are now seeing growing companies attract attention and revenue by efficiently creating products that are made uniquely for a single customer.
Very Personal Digital Assistants
We have long had digital devices to assist us. With the advent of new interfaces such as augmented reality glasses and gesture control as well as almost-intelligent software that understands us and what we want, digital assistants have become very personal indeed. Those who learn how to use these tools well will effectively be outsourcing part of their brain to become smarter, more effective and efficient, with more refined senses and increased capabilities, simply out-classing their competitors.
Visual Power
Information overload has run amok, swamping us with far more information than we can deal with. Long passages of text are rarely read, and people are being drawn to visual representations that convey insights quickly and efficiently. In stores where experience is key, and in every marketing and communications media, powerful visuals are increasingly not just necessary to cut through, but fundamental enablers to being seen at all.
Power to the Worker
The MegaTrend of “power to the individual” is highly visible today in how customers and citizens are calling the tune to previously arrogant institutions. As important is the shift of power to the worker. The companies succeeding today and tomorrow are those attracting the most talented to work for them, very simply by giving them what they want. These elite are looking for stimulating work, flexibility in when, where and how they work, and meaning by having a positive impact through their efforts.
Learn to Earn
As change accelerates, a divide is rapidly emerging. Those who take the time to study and learn about new possibilities are seizing new opportunities, while those who continue to rely on what they know of yesterday’s world are being left behind. As the world of business changes, success is increasingly going to those who understand they need to keep on learning in order to grow their earning power.
Light Up Your Life
In a connected world you are either visible or invisible. Being active in social and business worlds, both online and offline, allows you to be seen and to be found. Those who are interested in others will find that they are interesting to others, becoming beacons to customers and opportunities. In the world of business people often used to hide themselves, adopting false personas, but with a changing society being fully and completely ourselves is not just a personal opportunity, but a way to inspire others, be seen and grow businesses fast.
Will the Respect Network enable us to take back control of our data and our lives?
By Ross DawsonYesterday I attended the Sydney launch event of the Respect Network, an initiative designed to allow individuals to own and take control of their data.
They played this video, narrated by John Hurt, who starred in the film 1984. Apparently American audiences have thought this clip to be highly controversial, however it seems to provide a reasonable view of how things are.
Take Back Control from Respect Network on Vimeo.
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Professional services relationships as the primary portal to value creation
By Ross DawsonA week ago I gave a keynote to a relatively small but rapidly growing professional services firm on the occasion of their 10th birthday celebration, to help them think about their next decade of business.
My presentation began with macro trends, then drilled into shifts in the professional services landscape, and finally onto the leadership required to create the future of professional services.
The theme that the group picked up on the most which drove our ensuing conversation was how they could tap external experts to generate value for clients.
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The death of news-on-paper is the rebirth of news organizations
By Ross DawsonMy Newspaper Extinction Timeline is now well over 3 years old, in which time it has been viewed many millions of times and appeared in publications in over 30 countries. There has been a revival of interest recently from the extensive coverage of a keynote I gave at Arab Media Forum in Dubai last month and comments I made afterwards.
Many commentators on my framework seem to equate newspapers with newspaper companies. That is completely incorrect.
Such a thing as a “newspaper” company has ceased to exist except in regional areas of developing countries. What were newspaper companies are now news organizations.
The death of news-on-paper absolutely does not imply the death of news organizations. In fact it is an enabler of their rebirth.
Dominique Delport, the very switched-on Global MD of Havas Media Group, has created an excellent slide deck titled Newspapers: The End… Seriously? (embedded below). He opens with my Newspaper Extinction Timeline and goes on to paint a bright future for the industry.
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The massive impact on economic growth of open data in government
By Ross DawsonI was very pleased to see today’s launch of the report Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target, from Nicholas Gruen’s Lateral Economics, commissioned by Omidyar Networks, the philanthropic organization of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
The report looks at the massive positive economic impact of governments adopting open data policies.
Source: Open for Business
The major figure from the report is that potential value from open data to the G20 nations is $2.6 trillion annually, or around 1.1% of GDP over the next 5 years. The major sectors where value accrues from open data policies are Education, Transport, Consumer Products, Electricity, Oil and Gas, Health Care, and Consumer Finance.
As the report explains:
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How the next generation of display technologies will transform mobile computing
By Ross DawsonThis morning I was interviewed on the Morning Show about next generation technologies including holograms on smartphones, machine to machine (M2M) communication, neuro-hacking and brain implants.
Click on the image to see a video of the segment.
The possibility of holograms on smartphones is absolutely compelling.
Back from when the first smartphones came out I pointed to the interfaces as the critical enabler of rich computing on-the-go, as shown for example in my Future of the Media Lifecycle framework.
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Civic crowdfunding and the future of government and taxation
By Ross DawsonCrowdfunding is central to my interests in understanding the future. My background in capital markets and long-standing perspective of the living networks has made it a natural space for me, in looking at new ways our collective financial resources can yield the greatest economic and social benefit.
I was recently named one of the top 30 influential thought leaders in crowdfunding in the world (of which there are only 2 outside the US). I think it’s fair to say that’s an exaggeration of my prominence, however as I am increasingly focusing on the future of crowdfunding I hope the insights and perspectives I am currently developing will have a significant reach.
One of the most obvious ways in which crowdfunding can have a far broader impact than it does today is in playing a role alongside government, by allocating funds to benefit citizens. The “civic crowdfunding” space, focused on funding local community projects such parks, community centers, festivals, and education, has thrived, with platforms such as Spacehive and Neighborly doing well, and strong enthusiasm from cities such as Bristol.
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Crowdsourcing Patent Research: How Crowdsourcing Is Influencing the Mainstream
By Steve BynghallCrowdsourcing patent research is a fascinating example of how a crowdsourced business model can start to influence the mainstream, and transform the way things are done.
Crowdsourcing is changing the patent and intellectual property industry. The way it has evolved gives an interesting glimpse into how crowdsourcing is infiltrating different business sectors.
The research involved in filing or challenging a patent revolves around finding the “prior art” of a patent’s subject area. In the past this has been the preserve of a relatively traditional industry model complete with government agencies and professional services firms.
But the increasingly global nature of intellectual property, the opening up of searchable patent databases on the web (made even easier thanks to Google), the high number of questionable patents and a highly litigious world has resulted in both commercial pressure and a clear opportunity to open up the sector to crowdsourced models.
Tapping the talent of both patent professionals and amateur researchers has some obvious benefits in lower costs, but it can also result in more extensive searches across multiple territories and in different languages. If there is interaction with the crowd along the way it also allows a more iterative approach to directed searches as new leads and unexpected avenues emerge. Ultimately all this helps reduce risks for any company filing a patent.
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