MORE THAN TECHNOLOGY 2019

HOW PEOPLE, SKILLS ANDORGANISATIONAL CULTURE ARE THE

REAL POWERHOUSES BEHINDDIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Business strategies: digital by default

The rise of the digital ‘knowledge worker’

Digital skills gap: is upskilling the answer?

Enabling your employees to reach ‘innovana’

From the editorWhen you hear the words ‘digital transformation’, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps it’s the technology; from AI and apps, through cloud computing and on to quantum computing, not to mention everything in between? Or do you consider the people that drive forward digital transformation, the skills they need or what type of culture can kill or nurture the chances of an organisation benefiting from digital?

However, there’s a risk that ‘people are more important than tech’ becomes a platitude. It might well be true; after all, it takes people with the requisite skills to innovate and identify opportunities to use technology productively, as well as to spearhead its adoption across an organisation. But how can we turn this statement into something insightful and practically useful for our businesses?

In this set of articles, we argue that people, skills and culture are indeed the powerhouses behind digital transformation. We also take it a step further to look at why that’s the case and to consider how organisations can best ensure their workforces are ready to embrace our digital reality. Exploring topics such as creating an organisation that’s primed to innovate, spinning out small digital trials

without disrupting business continuity, and how digital skills are shaking up traditional workplace hierarchies.

These articles are intended to inspire – but also to challenge. If you have any comments, please do get in touch.

Chris MulliganStrategic Growth Director Chris.Mulligan@atkinsglobal.com

Mike SpainSenior Consultant and Cyber Academy Lead

Mike.Spain@atkinsglobal.com

Mike is founder and chair of NeuroCyberUK, Non-Executive Director for Cyber Exchange and leads the Cyber Academy for Atkins. He is an innovation and growth specialist, and neurodiversity advocate in the cyber sector; his work aims to ensure the development of an accessible and sustainable UK cyber ecosystem.

Marcus SamphireManaging ConsultantMarcus.Samphire@atkinsglobal.com

Marcus leads the design, implementation and transformation of the PMO services Atkins manages in partnership with clients across the security, intelligence and government sectors.

Tom NewtonManaging ConsultantTom.Newton@atkinsglobal.com

Tom leads Atkins’ P3M Services Practice, which delivers business and digital transformation for clients across the UK. He specialises in helping clients shape and deliver complex change programmes, having led major programmes in government and critical national infrastructure.

Symon CusackAgile Technical DirectorSymon.Cusack@atkinsglobal.comSymon has over 18 years’ experience as a Change Practitioner acrossa range of sectors, most recently focusing on Agile. Having worked with organisations both bigand small, Symon appreciates,first-hand, the complexities and cultural challenges associated with adopting new ways of working.

Grace Newman Management ConsultantGrace.Newman@atkinsglobal.comGrace is a Change and Management Consultant. She has been working for Atkins, a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, since 2015, navigating new ways of working for client problems; championing Lean Start-up and Design Thinking methodology.

Rebecca Mosedale Principal Consultant Rebecca.Mosedale@atkinsglobal.com

Rebecca’s career has been designing solutions that tackle social issues and deliver improvements to individuals, families and communities. Leading multi-organisational and multi-discipline teams, Rebecca has delivered innovative commercial and partnership models, and new operating models, that have leveraged technology to improve outcomes for society.

Chris Mulligan Strategic Growth Director Chris.Mulligan@atkinsglobal.com

Chris is responsible for working across the business to shape strategy, drive growth and accelerate digital transformation. He first joined Atkins to establish the Public Sector Consulting Practice and has since led on launching new incubator businesses specialising in technology-enabled services.

An introduction to Digital Transformation

At Atkins we offer a range of digital transformation services to support and guide you at every stage of the transformation journey:

Digital transformation fitness assessment

Digital vision and strategy development

Digital delivery integrator

Agile delivery models in complex environments

Digital PMO and programme delivery

WHAT IS IT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Our world is facing unprecedented changes in technology, climate, population and political and economic power bases – technology alone is increasingly prolific, faster, smarter & more connected. Digital transformation is about making the best use of digital technologies and innovative ways of working to revolutionise business operations; delivering tangible and lasting improvements for customers and end users.

Some of the challenges:

Over 51% of the global population is online.

Technologies such as IoT, AI, 5G, Quantum Computing, machine learning, advanced analytics and big data mean we are all becoming connected to critical national infrastructure.

Progress is becoming faster: we are at the slowest point of digital development and progress now than at any point in the future.

We can’t stop: every company is now a technology company.

We don’t need to understand how the machine works as much as we need to figure how we want to apply machines in our society.

But that also means lots of opportunity:

Through digital transformation you can:

Strengthen and equip yourself to navigate and thrive in today’s ever-complex, increasingly connected and digital world.

Take advantage of unprecedented changes to society, technology capability, massive diversity and new business models, in order to achieve enduring cultural and organisational change that delivers improved results.

Reduce business cost, exploiting digital technologies and drive possibilities to create a leaner, agile organisation that responds at pace.

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Business strategies: digital by defaultDigital innovations are bringing exponential opportunities to our society. But what about for our businesses? And perhaps more importantly, how can businesses not just adopt these innovations but embed the potential of the digital world into their business strategy?

The purpose, vision and strategy for any large organisation simply has to consider major trends like demographics, climate, economy and technology. We see the best and most effective organisations not having a dedicated digital strategy, but a clear strategy that considers, assesses and embraces digital innovation. We must be open to this concept as technologies converge across industries and sectors, supply chains aggregate, and services build more bespoke front-ends. A business strategy needs to consider these trends and be digital by default, recognising that disruption is the new ‘normal’, and setting a vision and strategy must have digital running through it.

Winning over the workforceIt’s important to note that, in the earlier stages of digital transformation, one of the biggest barriers for many organisations will be cultural resistance. A strong way to respond to this would be to push the benefits of ‘going digital’ to users and employees, by focusing initial efforts on one area where it’s possible to make a quick win, such as digitalising your project management function first. A good project management office is uniquely placed to work with a wide range of stakeholders. It understands core business values and can support and influence.

According to S. Burak Kaplanoglu, a Senior Manager at PwC:

“Change can be uncomfortable for anyone as it is not easy to let go of paper-based solutions which have a lot of flexibility and certainty.”

The key here, is to avoid going digital for the sake of it, and instead ensuring we’re using the right kind of data and the most appropriate digital tools to add real value. “It’s an unfortunate fact that teams have to spend more time on report production rather than providing analysis and insight” he adds. But by embedding digital tools into a PMO, this doesn’t need to be the case.

A smart use of dataThere is so much data around these days, data about everybody and everything. What’s possible now, and what’s new, is meaningful interrogation and accurate interpretation of that data, and this is the step-change that is happening now. Artificial intelligence can now help us wrangle data like never before. From a business perspective, we can use this data to look inwards and embed digital tools where they could benefit most.

Through an analysis of the workforce,this data could also highlight which teams are ready to start interacting with new digital tools, which teams are likely to be resistant to change, and where trainingon how to use these tools is required.

Data analytics company Cornerstonehas made this analysis its objective andhas been put to use by 20 of the Fortune 100 companies in the US. Cornerstone’s software collects data points from 13 countries across 18 industries to map the likes of commute distance, interactions with managers, and even employee movement and tone of voice thanks to‘smart badges’. Using Cornerstone’s data analysis, XeroX1 was able to improve its staff retention rates by 20%, by hiring candidates with the personality traits associated with their long-standing workforce; choosing those who were‘creative’ over ‘inquisitive’ individuals.

Looking aheadUnfortunately, embedding a digitalmindset into a business strategy is noquick fix – we must be ready to adapt to what comes next. Technology is advancing, all the time. We must be not only open to change, but ready to continue adaptingas the world around us does so, too.

1 https://www.bernardmarr.com/img/bigdata-case-studybook_final.pdf

Rebecca Mosedale Principal Consultant

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Enabling your employees to reach ‘innovana’Digital transformation isn’t a new concept; we’ve been doing it for years. But it’s the ‘transformation’ part we need to focus on right now – how do we transform our products and services, and take our workforce on the journey to where a digital mindset is the norm?

Is ‘innovana’ the answer? Innovana is the optimum state of innovation, whereby employees have the tools and permission to innovate. It’s a self-enabling function of the business, a cultural shift, driven by individual motivations to achieve beyond what we already know. Applied to the workforce, this innovative mind-set could be the answer to conquering the challenges and optimising the opportunities that arise from digital transformation.

So, how might we cultivate a culture for innovation in our organisation and reach innovana?

Without suffocating innovation with process, there are a series of factors that need to be considered to create the environment for success.

Ultimately, we all have a level of individuality in the way we approach new tasks or challenges. If we can understand the diversity of this thinking in our workforce, we can begin to map employee motivations and better understand employee behaviours towards innovation; the blockers and the enablers in their quest for innovana.

1. Basic Tools / Hygiene Factors For employees to work beyond existing structures they need to have the right tools. If they have access to new, fast technologies, they will find efficiencies in their day-to-day job, allowing extra time to deliver, or to innovate. Beyond technology solutions, basic tools might include access to training, access to industry and more.

If basic needs are not met, we cannot

expect staff to innovate. As the culture for innovation develops, so too will these basic needs.

2. Permission Organisations are increasingly expecting employees to innovate – a survival instinct in the face of changing markets and customer needs. We’re seeing established firms that need to adapt well-established processes and acquire a start-up mentality by relying on other, smaller firms for niche services.

Beyond business leaders recognising market trends and putting the spotlight on innovation, what is really being changed to enable it? More needs to be done beyond verbally endorsing innovation. Leaders must be seen to actively support behaviours of innovation, through their attitude and acceptance of risk. As behaviours evolve, so too will the degree of permission sought (or freedom to innovate), and ‘failing fast’ will become accepted as a positive learning experience.

3. Reward and Recognition In expecting employees to be the ambassadors for driving innovation, there needs to be sufficient channels for both recognition and reward to meet employees’ needs. Innovation is not a straightforward trajectory to success; there will be highs and lows and they should be supported, despite the lows! Failure is merely a lesson learnt after all.

If employees successfully innovate, we need to consider how they might be rewarded. Providing the individual with the autonomy, time and resources to

nurture their ideas into living products and services may be all that is required.

4. Self-endorsement Self-belief plays an integral part in a person’s ability to think innovatively. It means employees believe in their own potential to be innovative, and feel supported by the business and their superiors to be creative and explore new ideas. Self-endorsement may not be present in every aspect of a person’s role, depending on a number of factors – from motivations to experience and confidence in a specific task.

So, are you enabling your employees to reach innovana?

We shouldn’t expect every individual to reach innovana – everyone in an organisation has a role to play in contributing to its success. What’s important is making sure innovation can be pursued in the parts of a business where it can have a positive impact.

For those who can benefit from achieving innovana, we need to enable employees to think and work beyond existing processes and technologies. We must also provide an environment where employees feel empowered to think beyond the norm. Diversity plays a key role in creating a successful workforce – now we must put that diversity at the heart of the organisation to avoid a ‘one size fits all’ approach to innovation. It certainly won’t be a quick fix, but the rewards will be exponential.

Grace NewmanManagement Consultant

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The rise of the digital ‘knowledge worker’In today’s digital age, it has never been more important for organisations to unlock the potential of our human resources and unleash the power of the team. Technology continues to present opportunities for transforming how people live and work. But organisational hierarchy and the way we think about leadership needs to catch up and join us in the digital age.

According to Peter Drucker, hailed as the father of modern management, “knowledge workers are individuals who know more about the work that they perform than their bosses”. In this context, how can a manager attempt to oversee or even coordinate the technical activities of people who are infinitely more capable than they are of defining the tasks necessary to accomplish their mission and provide customers with what they expect?

Author and motivational expert Daniel Pink’s attempts to answer this question in his book, Drive. According to Pink, the problem is with the incentives that businesses provide to try and motivate their staff. Pay aside, he states that there are three things businesses can do to really unlock workers’ potential:

1. Give staff a clear purpose so they can understand how they contribute to the bigger picture.

2. Provide the tools and training to enable workers to feel they are mastering their profession.

3. Give empowerment and autonomy for staff to come up with solutions to clearly defined problems.

Smart organisations embrace a culture that embodies the above. The resulting rise of the knowledge worker can be evidenced by the organisations who are now recognising and rewarding key workers to the same standards as their senior managers. No longer does the only option for promotion mean moving away from ‘doing’ in favour of becoming a people manager. Now, talent is able to progress up the pay scale while exploiting their digital mindset and skills like design thinking, entrepreneurial approaches to learning, and agile and lean delivery.

To support this new structure, digital organisations are changing the way projects and teams are managed. Work is being allocated to established teams rather than individuals in temporary project structures, creating a ‘team of teams’ approach. Organisations are also identifying the value of the agile Product Owner model, whereby a team member is responsible for identifying priorities and enabling the team to self-organise around the work, rather than having a figure of seniority who allocates tasks.

This team-level enablement and empowerment is key in unlocking the potential of digital knowledge workers. Decisions are still made based on a clearly identified vision and list of priorities, based on a deep understanding of each customers’ needs. But the move away from an autocratic ‘command and control’ culture leads to an environment where team members are free to work with autonomy and innovate to find the best solution for the customer and the organisation.

For large, established organisations, championing the rise of the digital knowledge worker will mean a cultural transformation that will likely cut to the very core of their business model. But done successfully, an organisation will reap the many rewards of empowering staff to develop their own skillset while putting the clients’ needs at the heart of their work.

Can you afford not to unlock the potential of your digital knowledge workers?

Symon CusackPrincipal Consultant

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COLLABORATION TOOLS

INTELLIGENCE SHARING

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

COMMON PROCESSES ACCESS

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0110111Mike SpainSenior Consultant and Cyber Academy Lead

Chris MulliganStrategic Growth Director

Digital skills gap: Is upskilling the answer?The pace at which digital technologies are being adopted and exploited is ever increasing. So how do we ensure our workforce can keep up? Could the answer be to change the way we attract and develop people with digital skills?

Why do you think it’s necessary to change the way we attract and retain talent, when it comes to digital?Chris: The world is changing. There is an ever-increasing demand for more infrastructure – buildings, roads, railways, energy – that we cannot keep up with. We need to get more from the capacity we have; build, maintain and operate assets more efficiently and sustainably; and deliver infrastructure projects more predictably. Technology and data can help us to do this, but we must equip our business to harness these capabilities. Upskilling is a critical part of our plan at Atkins, including technical learning like how we use new systems and tools. However, for me, it is more about building our culture – fostering new digital behaviours including collaboration, knowledge sharing, innovation and agility.

Mike: Engineering skills have been in short supply for the last three decades. From a cyber security perspective, we just don’t have enough people with the skills we need to protect these new, digitally enabled assets. And thanks to the ever-increasing demand that Chris has mentioned, an ISC Cybersecurity Workforce Study has predicted that the current shortfall is expected to increase to 3.5 million within the next two years. To meet this challenge, organisations must be more creative in their attempts to attract and develop talented people and explore non-linear channels.

Looking across the industry, we’re often told that we need to hire outside the traditional demographics. What are your thoughts on this?Mike: Digital skills exist far more broadly than many recruitment adverts care to venture. The ‘must-have’ skills highlighted in a job description, are in many cases, an unnecessarily exhaustive and prescriptive list of role requirements, qualifications and experience, rather than a true representation of what is needed. It’s important for organisations to shy away from this ‘traditional’ model. There is a clear business benefit: diverse teams are more productive, creative and effective, and offer different approaches and solutions.

Chris: We are starting to more actively attract staff from non-traditional backgrounds. Some of our qualified engineers no longer see themselves as engineers, but as ‘Digital Solutions Leads’. We are hiring software architects, data scientists, cyber experts and digital engineers – people you wouldn’t have seen in a design and engineering consultancy 10 years ago. It can be difficult to attract these candidates as they may see somewhere like Google as a more attractive and obvious option. What we do offer them though is the opportunity to work on the world’s most critical infrastructure projects, and make a real difference to people’s lives.

What are the main benefits to upskilling?Mike: It will always be easier and cheaper to follow a well-trodden path than explore the unfamiliar. But this approach is neither effective nor efficient.

Chris: At Atkins, we have created a collaboration skills syllabus as part of our digital upskilling programme. This ranges from using collaboration tools to helping teams to form and build collaborative ways of working suitable for their objectives. We are always investing in knowledge management, but we are putting more emphasis on sharing intelligence to the front line, providing access to common processes and tools, encouraging people to share and adopt good practice and making our organisational data part of the work-flow.

Mike: We’ve also launched our own Cyber Academy, to take us away from seeing digital – and specifically cyber – as a ‘bolt on’ skill. The Academy facilitates a structured path to upskill graduates and apprentices and cross-skill existing engineers into cyber security practitioners. Non-linear and non-traditional channels are very much a part of our mission at the Academy, meaning we’re enriching the sector by encouraging more women, mid-career transfers, ex-service personnel and other under-represented groups into the industry.

Are staff members receptiveto this upskilling?Chris: When we asked our staff about‘digital’, they actually said the most important thing to them was learningand development. There is interest in learning about BIM and new engineering tools, as well as lean and agile methods and tools that can support collaboration. Wider across our organisation, we are finding that all our staff are recognisingthe need to develop new skills. Forexample, in legal and commercialfunctions, they are interested in understanding the opportunities andrisks posed by increased data sharing.

What should other firmsconsider before setting up a digital upskilling initiative?Chris: I think it’s critical to ensure thereis alignment on the purpose and goalsof digital transformation. An obviouspoint, but it’s essential that leaders are aligned on the need for transformationand the need to invest time and budgetin developing capability. We also need to think about behaviours, not just technical skills. We have found using new technology is more about a way of working andhow you collaborate with others, from colleagues to suppliers and clients. Finally,I’d recommend providing digital trainingat the point of need (for example, when starting up a new project) rather than anall staff sheep dip. We have found thatteam based training for those starting new projects is a very effective way to build skills and retain knowledge and, through the process, build a new team environment.

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Top tips for scaling up to achieve digital transformationTransforming your organisation to capitalise on the potential of new technology, big data and hyper-connectivity can feel daunting. To mix metaphors: what if you put all your eggs in one basket and find out you’ve backed the wrong horse?

Indeed, investing time and money into ensuring your workforce adopts the wrong technology or way of working can have dire consequences in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive commercial environment.

One way to harness the power of digital and transforming the way your people work is to start relatively small – trialling new approaches – and then ‘scaling up’ when success has been proven.

Here are our top tips for taking this ‘scaling up’ approach.

1. Find your balance of consistency, and pace and agility

Consistency in a disrupting world is hard and, some would say, restricts pace and agility. Navigating uncertainty at pace and maintaining confidence that business remains resilient, needs the right balance between both. We must be consistent in how we operate, while maintaining enough operational agility to flex to changes in digital, regulation, user demands and wider, unforeseen events.

Different sectors and organisations will have difference balance points, depending on the pace of new entrants, the ‘thirst’ of their customers or end-users, and their own cultural and organisational back-drop, or what we sometimes call ‘digital readiness’.

In my experience, finding the right balance also means finding the right type, time and place for process automation, optimal use of AI, and digital tools to analyse large volumes of data. It’s also helped

by maintaining the right amount andtype of human interaction – meaning consistency is delivered effectively andefficiently, while remaining human-centric.

Once this balance has been found, maintaining consistency and pace becomes a little easier. When rolling out new services, ideas or products, we should select a very clear destination or outcome and adopt well-rehearsed, agile ways of working which allows collaboration atpace, but with enough structure and a shared understanding of what ‘operatingat pace’ will entail. Just as importantly,all parties agree on what trade-offs willbe needed when working in this manner.

2. Create an environment forcontinuous improvement

For any organisation, the on-going assessment of operational performanceis key to identifying opportunities towork differently. In my experience atAtkins, effective recruitment can be very valuable to help with this process.

Strategic and, to a certain extent, imaginative recruitment will not only challenge convention but will also set the tone for continuous improvement duringa time of unprecedented change and disruption. Recruiting ‘outside the box’ can bring impetus, energy and confidence to pilot projects or change concepts which,if nurtured correctly, can bring widespread benefits to the whole organisation.

For us, as a clear statement of intent,we have employed the company’sfirst Cyborg Ethnographer to help us continually improve our understandingof the changing and ever-converging

relationship between technology and humans, and what this means for society.

3. Don’t become stuck in trial and development while the world progresses

Knowing when to spin out from trial and development into ‘business as usual’ is really hard. The usual business or industry conditions can be met: enough demand for the product or service; users’ preparedness; appropriate product testing, security and ethical issues addressed; predictions on required impact/margin; and future long-term support at market. Yet, there is another element: knowing when you are ready to move forward. This is helped by advice from trusted clients or customers, partners, and domain experts who are acutely aware of trends, technology and demographic disruptions, market conditions, and user needs. Twinned with the right tools and data, this can help organisations progress with foresight, out of development cycles and leap, (not too early or speculatively), into the unknown.

It’s clear that Transformation does not always come easy and needs to be continually worked at and worked on. Whether developing the kernel of an idea, or taking those first tentative steps, the journey from pilot to fully embedded outcome or service needs: the right balance, the right culture of continual improvement and finding the right time to move into implementation.

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Atkins’ Digital Reality report looked at the challenges and opportunities presented by the collision of the physical and digital worlds. As part of this report, a survey of key industry figures gauged their reactions to the impact of the digital revolution on their businesses. Here are some highlights of the findings:

“Transformation needs to be done with a proper change programme, led by business leaders and not IT departments to ensure it is embedded in the business, not seen as something being done to the business.”

Anonymous

“The rate of change is just limited by people’s imaginations, budgets and their ability to adapt and embrace new technologies.”

Pete MellishChief Technology Officer, Manufacturing,Utilities & Services, Microsoft

17%

Optimised

20%

Exploratory

27%

Enabled

36%

Enhanced

Where does your company sit on the digital transformation maturity spectrum?

13%Internet of things

Artificial intelligence

25%

Big data and analytics

29%

What technologies are going to be the most disruptive?

How important is technology to fostering strong customer relationships?

70%Extremely important

3%Unimportant

3%Unsure

23%Important

“Technology and digital channels supplement and improve human interaction as opposed to replacing it.”

Kevin IvesDigital Transformation Director,Arriva Trains

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View the full report here.

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Helping businesses navigate and thrive in today’s ever-changing, complex, increasingly

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