April 9, 2024
Without giving away my years, I can still remember the reference to the 3 Rs in elementary school; Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. By the way, I am not the only one who notices that only one of those words begins with the letter “R” am I?
Of course, you may be asking yourself what do the basic education skills from yesteryear have to do with the digital age, and more specifically enterprise virtualization?
To a point Everything!
People Engineering
In talking about the important role that VMware plays in “harnessing the capabilities of modern technology from the edge to the core, to the cloud,” which is critical for the transformation of your business, Dell referred to us as being the leader in virtualization. Specifically, referring to us as providing “the fabric necessary to enable automation, orchestration, and cloud connection” through which we serve as the bridge between “users and their data centre.”
As someone who graduated University with an Honours in Computing and Information Systems, I both appreciate and wholeheartedly agree with the above assessment.
That said, I also recognize that organizations cannot transform digitally if their people are not themselves transformed. Or to put it another way, we need to focus on people engineering versus technology engineering.
People Transformation
The concept of people engineering is not necessarily a new or radical concept. Perhaps a more familiar term is cultural transformation. But here is the thing, you cannot accomplish anything without first understanding the end-user landscape and what drives their motivations.
There are no shortages of articles and studies that talk about the need to transform your people if you hope to transform your enterprise digitally. However, the one article that stands out the most for me is a November 28th, 2018 CIO magazine article titled “Digital transformation is about people, not technology.”
While the article’s assertion that “Digital is about technology, but the transformation is about people and motivating teams to change their mindset” is in and of itself noteworthy, what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that these words appear in an information technology publication. Traditionally, the people who reside in an organization’s IT realm are not necessarily known for being “people oriented.” At least that has been the case in the past.
Breaking through the traditional functional silos that are an obstacle to realizing the digital promise is what VMware does by creating new and improved avenues of communication and collaboration. It is the ability to seamlessly bring people together that is at the heart of the “automation, orchestration, and cloud connection” capability I talked about earlier. It is also where the 3 Ws come into play.
3 Ws
So how do you transform your people? It starts with the 3 Ws being Workforce, Workplace, and Workspace.
We have already talked about the importance of transforming the Workforce, now let’s focus on Workplace and Workspace.
In another just published CIO article from January 18th, 2019 “Digital workplace strategy: 10 steps to greater agility, productivity,” Senior CIO writer Clint Boulton suggests that “your digital transformation is doomed unless you empower employees to succeed in the digital era,” and a big part of that empowerment according to Boulton is to “craft a workplace that boosts engagement and agility.”
What this means according to Gartner is that your greatest source of competitive advantage will be your “workforce’s ability to exploit digital technologies creatively.” To enable your people to do this you must boost engagement and agility through the “consumerization” of the work environment including “computers, mobile devices and productivity, and collaboration applications and, increasingly, chatbots, virtual assistant technology, personal analytics, and immersive workspaces.”
Regarding the immersive Workspaces about which Gartner spoke, it means that you need to “create smart workspaces that enhance collaborative work activities and provide space for individual concentration.”
In all of these areas, VMware can help you to develop a digital strategy that will transform your organization from both a technology and people standpoint.
Join me at Activate Digital 2019 where you will gain additional insights into the 3 Ws for digital transformation success.