JUNE 20198It's clear that the digital revolution continues to affect every industry in profound ways. The rise of digital business models ranging from new social media platforms to creative car-sharing and payment services is happening at an amazing pace.These market dynamics continue to put pressure on traditional structures and processes within organizations. The demand for productivity, speed, and innovation from customers has only intensified. Most organizations have undertaken transformations to become more digital: hiring new digital talent, modernizing IT platforms, and leveraging data more effectively.But beyond having the right platforms and talent, the digital transformation requires a cultural change, a new way to operate, and broader digital thinking than the technology function. It requires a willingness to go fast, and to iterate and pivot when necessary to make progress. CIO and IT leaders are uniquely positioned to drive that culture change across the enterprise.In April 2015, GE announced a decision to exit most of its $300 billion portfolio of financial services businesses and to refocus on its leading Industrial businesses in aviation, energy, health and other sectors. To rapidly effect these changes, while keeping the company safe and secure, required a global transformation of the company's treasury operations. Practically every aspect of this initiative required intensive transformative work from the IT team. Objectives included both rationalizing financial services capabilities and enhancing capabilities for our industrial business with new digital tools and services.To accomplish this, we adopted new ways to deliver IT services that have resulted in faster execution, better outcomes, and more satisfied customers. Not only did it help the company to transform successfully, it has become "the new normal" in the way we do our work.The cultural change that has driven our transformation consists of the following key elements:1. Creating Multi-Disciplinary TeamsRegardless of how effective processes and communications are in an organization, traditional structures between IT and other functions create overhead that can slow down execution. Maintaining aligned priorities and focus across multiple internal organizations over time is challenging. By organizing into dedicated mission-based teams, consisting of the appropriate functional and IT resources, amazing results can be achieved in a short amount of time with better outcomes to customers.In our treasury transformation, we assigned our strongest IT managers to lead the various simplification work streams. We created dedicated mission-based teams consisting of process experts, analysts, architects, and developers with a single objective to simplify our core processes and consolidate the sub-ledgers. Everyone understood the objective and their role in achieving it. The team worked together to solve issues quicker without delayed follow-ups. The approach worked so well it was hard to tell who was IT and who was functional. The results were fantastic. Seven sub-ledgers were retired in year one.2. Empowering Employees to Get Things DoneWhen senior leaders and managers empower teams to execute, you can save a large amount time spent in making decisions, escalating issues, and reviewing status. Leaders should empower employees by setting clear expectations and guidelines on when to raise decisions and issues, and when it is not necessary. If you have the right talent, this action is liberating and brings the right drive and creativity Steve RulloTo Drive Digital Transformation, First Change the CultureBy Steve Rullo, CIO-Treasury, GE CapitalIN MY OPINIONJeff Palm
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