EAE Episode 30 – From Order Taker to Change Agent

Dan Twing and I return to the theme of shifting enterprise I&O (including automation) to an entrepreneurial focus that shapes and prioritizes initiatives that have measurable business outcomes.

Delivering business impact is challenging when executives and business stakeholders don’t know what I&O does or where it could contribute more to business goals.

First Understand, Then Be Understood

When faced with customers who don’t know anything about their products, an entrepreneur begins by engaging with the customer to listen to their needs and understand how addressing those needs will help the customer. The entrepreneur then uses what they have learned to discuss how their products can help to resolve the customer needs^[1].

I&O leaders can follow the same playbook, spending time with executives and stakeholders to understand their goals, initiatives and pain points, using that information to inform I&O priorities. The learnings from these conversations can be supplemented with “state of the business” briefings at Town Halls, and shareholder reports if the company is public. In addition to providing executive viewpoints on business priorities and financial outlook, Town Hall meetings highlight major projects and initiatives that will impact the organization. Shareholder reports present changes to business strategy and mitigation plans for significant business risks.

Using this knowledge about the business, I&O leaders can put together a 1-2 page report with information showing how I&O supports the stakeholder’s initiatives and applications, including service level and usage data, as well as summaries of any outages that occurred during the reporting period^[2]. If the initial discussions identified new initiatives, include a status summary of I&O activities, highlighting any areas where the stakeholder or their team may need to take action. Finally, provide a short list of I&O projects that will impact the stakeholder (e.g., an I&O disaster recovery exercise).

Review the report with your peers and manager to get their feedback and make sure that the report reflects their perspective^[3]. If the report is self-explanatory, send it to the stakeholder with an offer to meet to discuss, if the elements of the report require explanation, schedule time to meet with the stakeholder to review the report. Repeat this process for each major I&O stakeholder and members of the executive team. Based on the feedback, determine how frequently to produce the report and meet with I&O stakeholders.

In some cases, the conversations with stakeholders and executives are going to generate negative feedback about I&O’s services or staff. It is important not to be defensive about issues or criticism, take an action item to investigate the root cause of the problem and come back with an analysis and if needed, an action plan to correct the issue.

Getting started with stakeholder reporting can take time, but after producing a few reports the process should be straightforward and opportunities to delegate elements to staff or use generative AI will become evident. Remember that the purpose of this effort is to address the I&O knowledge gap for stakeholders and executives, helping them understand what I&O does and how it contributes to business initiatives. An additional benefit can be building relationships with stakeholders, becoming a trusted advisor who can answer questions and help shape business initiatives.

Developing good relationships with stakeholders and executive management will provide insight into what’s important for the business, and is a key part of shifting I&O towards a strategic position in the organization. These relationships will take time and effort to build, but the results will be executive recognition of an I&O organization that enables business success.

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1. Understanding a customer’s use cases, needs and pain points in order to shape solutions is a core element of product thinking, and is an important part of shifting I&O from a tactical to a strategic mindset. We’ll explore I&O adoption of product-thinking in future posts. ↩︎

2. If you are new to the I&O organization or the I&O leadership role, it may be necessary to first conduct an audit to understand what’s working and what’s not, preparing an action plan in advance to address significant issues that may be raised in discussions with stakeholders and executives. ↩︎

3. In a large organization there may be other executives who should be briefed on the report before it is shared with the stakeholder, YMMV. ↩︎

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Episode Show Notes

Summary

Enterprise automation leaders must maintain reliable services supporting business and operational processes while also driving change in their organizations. In this episode, Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the challenges and opportunities of becoming a change agent, and why it is important to step forward rather than waiting for direction from above. They advocate behaving like an entrepreneur in identifying problems to be solved, building business cases, and actively selling their proposals to leadership.

Key Points

• Many automation groups only get attention when something is broken, functioning as a service rather than being recognized as a strategic asset
• Senior managers often do not understand how automation enables the business
• Automation leaders often wait for someone above them to provide direction on when to act
• No matter where you are in the organization, you have a role to play in moving change forward
• Automation leaders need to behave like entrepreneurs, driving change to improve their business impact
• Marketing and selling are not dirty words, they shape the way that automation leaders should:
  • frame their proposals in business terms,
  • understand what is important to the executives and stakeholders who will approve their recommendations, and
  • actively communicating the value that automation provides.

Takeaways for Automation Leaders

(1) Create a "State of Automation" briefing that your management and non-technical stakeholders can read to understand why automation matters to the business

(2) Meet with your management to understand:

• their expectations of what the automation team needs to work on,
• what business initiatives automation should be performing, and
• whether the leadership team feels the automation team is moving quickly enough

(3) Design and propose a small pilot where automation can deliver a measurable business improvement

References

1. Intrapreneurship (Wikipedia)
2. Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur, Gifford Pinchot III, (Harper & Row, 1985) - out-of-print

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