Radical Change in Corporate IT

The first series (Radical Change in IT) covers interviews with world experts in IT management, business design, or enterprise architecture to get their shot at what radical change is required in corporate IT.

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Radical Change in Corporate IT

Annika Klyver

March 17, 2021 • Annika Klyver • Season 1 • Episode 7

If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Annika Klyver, a teacher, an innovator in business architecture, the inventor of the Milky Way Enterprise Mapping technique, and co-author of a book on enterprise design patterns. Currently she is a Business Architect/Designer at Scania and an active member of the enterprise design community of the Intersection Group.

Annika provides great answers, based on years of field work, about the need to change how IT works in organizations. Her insights cover many topics such as:

Raising expectations towards flexibility of IT systems and designing for change rather than being forced by it.
Going away from the handover of deliverables and to the handover of trust.
Why value flow roles and product portfolio managers have a weaker position for inducing change.
The need to make people aware of how you progress from an idea to actual change.
How corporate IT is often viewed as shadow business.

R.M.: 0:08

This is R.M. Bastien and welcome to another episode of expert advice on radical change in corporate it. This morning, we have Annika Klyver. Annika is a lateral thinker in the domains of business architecture, design, complexity, agility, systems thinking, anti-fragile, just a few of the topics she specializes in. For 10 years now, she has worked as a consultant for IRM, Sweden, and participated in several and interesting think tanks, such as Enterprise Design Association, the Architectural Thinking Association, which has now become the Intersection Group. She has pioneered the use of the Milkyway Map a business capability mapping tool that uses value flows as the basis, or the positioning of the items. For those that are curious about Annika and/or Milkyway and/or the Intersection Group, I've put the links in the podcast description. And lastly, but not the least, Anika has co- authored, a recently published book, entitled Enterprise Design Patterns, 35 Ways to Radically Increase Your Impact on the Enterprise. The link is also in summary. Annika Cliver, good afternoon!

Annika: 1:27

Well, thank you. Good afternoon. Or good morning to you. Thanks for having me.

R.M.: 1:32

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Annika: 1:35

Well, good

R.M.: 1:37

Annika. The, uh, the question this morning for you. There's only two questions. They're very simple, and open-ended. The first question is: If you had a magic wand(leaving aside, you know, the change management, then you could get to the end result with your magic wand) and you could radically modify the way that IT engages in organizations. How would you radically redefine roles, skills, interactions, collaboration models, structures, incentives, anything, anything except technology worth changing in order to significantly raise the value that IT provides to the organization, what would you do Anika?

Annika: 2:21

First thing, I would kind of try to come over or just decide that this is not anymore. It's this divide between it and business. Because that is really superficial in my way of looking at things. Bec ause th ere's not one business. It, w hen people say that they go to the business and the re's li ke, yeah, what part? Sales, purchasing, marketing logistics, or customer focus or what? So that is like the first thing to just get off th e table. And I know this is easier said than done, but there are organizations where alr eady th is is happening or this has happened. And, u h, I T is just sort of integrated into what everybody does more or less. That is sort of the most obvious one, but the re is mo re to this. Maybe this has to do with my background. I am not technician or an engineer from the beginning. I have a background in controlling financing, product portfolio stuff and all of those things. And I tend to have this way of looking at things that the IT is not technology for its sake. It's, it's something that helps us. It helps us, uh, s t or e information, it helps us compute, it helps us get answers. And that is something that should be at the fingertips of us all the time. And not really that we need to think, no, I need to go into technology or I need to get into the system. It is jus t be as so mething we all have access to and, um, e a si l y can relate to without those, um, i n te r faces and ways of hiding these very basic things that we want from I T be hind things, simplification systems, integration, non-exi sting integr ation, that makes it harder to get, uh, a c c es s to. Sort of those a bit more fundamental things are off the table. If I am still using my magic wand with like the third wish or something, I think that we need to find better ways of seeing ourselves as an enterprise, as an organization and as a person acting within this, or even in an ecosystem, if you're working a lot with others. And see how the connection of what we do really improves the way we can deliver value to customers or to external parties. I mean, I think a lot of organizations are moving into this platform thinking, so it's not so obvious of who is the customer at any given time. This way of being more aware of how does all the things that we do really improve this value flow and our ability to create better opportunities or offer in gs or services to the customers outside of our organiza tions. So tha t sense-making of how this, um, th e thi ngs that we are working on is really improving the, the la rger, uh, sy s t em of how we work. And I don't mean that in yeah.

R.M.: 5:21

Anika, do you mean by that, that the way that IT engages in the organization is, is without sufficient knowledge of those things of, of how we provide value to...

Annika: 5:34

Both. It's a two way thing. I think if we're not truly engaged in ongoing, along dialogues with the different dimensions of if I use this word, the business, which I don't like, and the IT, if we're not, um, sort of share the same view and the same understanding of what we're trying to achieve, then it's really hard for us to have this, these good interactions and this fast understanding of what would a good decision be here. What would a good maybe experiment be? You're trying to do something better, uh, when it comes to an opportunity that somebody sees. So I don't think that you can put this on IT and say that IT is not engaging enough. I think it's a two-way street here. We need to find each other in a better way. And, um, there will always be people that are more on you can call it domain specific knowledge, if it's logistics, or if it's a, you know, custom experience, things that you really are close to the customers. And then there are more people that might have a more technology based starting point. But I think we need to find ways of finding common ground so we can move faster together. There are too many handovers t hat I don't see as necessary. I think we could organize ourselves in better ways to make those handovers fewer. And in my magic wand world, maybe not, no handovers. Did that make it a bit c lear what I meant?

R.M.: 6:56

Yeah, certainly it does. You're touching a good point here. So I think you're referring to better integration

Annika: 7:04

And knowledge integration. Yeah.

R.M.: 7:06

So it's kind of a merging of what is today as separate, like an IT department and, and then there's the rest of the business. Of course we don't like to say that, but that's the reality for many organizations. You'd Like t o, to see that disappear through less handovers and more common knowledge. That's interesting, which I'm kind of asking a second question: Does it mean for you that the concept of a, an IT department would vanish?

Annika: 7:37

Yeah, I think we could maybe talk about an IT component or IT parts of maybe a business capability or a function. I don't really know what word to use, but let's stick with this capability. It's something a part of the organization that does something, it could be marketing sales or any of those things that almost all organizations are. And then they would have their specialized version of the IT landscape that supports them. And they are close to the people that work with that landscape. So you can consider them as one, rather than having a shadow, uh, organization in the basement. They call it them IT. I think what just... remove the basement and relocate people so that you sit close to the domain that you're supporting. That will give you a faster feedback loop to hearing what people are talking about. What are t he, what are they struggling with? What are their ambitions, what do they want to do with where the things ar e, the topics or t he challenges that they're working with? And how can you, if le t's s ay that we are from IT now, how can we support in those discussions and say, okay, that wi ll b e a, an easy solution. We already have all these things in place. We can just configure them for you or okay, you want to go in t hat direction. That is way more complicated. We need more time. Could we maybe if we consider this into something else and maybe come up with a, I don't know, the first version of this and see if this is really interesting. And then we can spend more time on the solution together, which is not an IT solution, but it's more of a domain solution for new way of w orking or a new way of interacting with customers or suppliers or whoever is, u m, i s in sort of network of people or organizations that we should work together with. So that is my take on it. I think IT is not going to disappear, but I think we should see them as a more, more integrated into the actual domain. So functions of the organization or processes, if you like. Yep.

R.M.: 9:29

Sometimes when we think about it, I mean, some people, especially those that don't know too much of IT, they think about it about computers and very technical roles. Of course you, and I know that it's not, it's not the case. I guess there are some roles that will always be very technical and blending them with the business might be a far reach, but in your integration between business and IT, what are the roles that you see as being the key ones that should uh blend?

Annika: 10:00

Well, I was thinking of it when I prepared for this. Maybe if we start with what I think that we're missing and, and, um, and that is even though if we were to have IT as an integrated part, I still think that we could strengthen these three roles that I will describe to you. It's um, like I said, I think we need to understand way better, how everything that we do all the, all the changes all the improvements all the things that we're changing, how that is clearly connected to the value stream or the value flow of how we deliver products or services to our customers or external parties, whoever they might be. And in that saying, I think that traditional organizations have very strong roles around the functions or the capabilities. There, you know, who is the marketing responsible, or the marketing chief marketing executive, you know, who the logistic people are. So, so that they are really clear, u m, clearly defined and they usually have their own budgets and their own ideas about what's what's the business plan. W hat a re t he, what are the strategies for my area? U h, the, the areas that are less defined and also in my experience weaker, is that's the, u h, dimension of the product and the product portfolios. Hence the ones that actually use the value f low to get their stuff out the door, if you like. The people that are, that own t he product portfolio o f a number of products that are being developed, or maybe t hey a re t hey're being, y ou k now, designed or innovated at some certain point. And then t here are prepared to be delivered and there's, there's marketing t here's s ale, t he is logistics or whatever means you have to, to get what y ou're offering to the customers. And then t here i s this feedback loop of, okay, how are people using it? Are they satisfied? How can we improve? A nd s o o n. And those rules roles are usually a lot weaker than the r oles o r the functions or the different departments, if you like. And there is a third role that IT think need to strengthen.

R.M.: 12:03

Yeah. Before we go to the third role, when you say weaker, what do you mean by that?

Annika: 12:10

I say that they are usually have less formal organizations around them. They have less money. They have less influence on the overall system. They can, they can work in different sectors of this value flow, but they have to negotiate with a lot of the different departments to get their, new way of maybe delivering a product actually happening. So I think there, we ought to find a better balance between the product dimension and the more functional organizations or departments of an organization. Do you do, do you recognize the, a dilemma or the conflict that I'm talking about?

R.M.: 12:50

If I can try to rephrase and you could confirm if I understood, is that once a product is defined, the, the operations they're more structured, they're stronger when they know what they have to do. But in the case of products and products portfolios, and improving that there's more intangible. And there's also more or lack of knowledge what's going on outside. And we're more in a fuzzy environment where, w here understanding what's outside is more difficult versus once a product(s) are defined and you have to produce them and you have to deliver them and send them to your customers, and so on, things are more stable. Would that, would that be one of the reasons?

Annika: 13:32

Yeah. I think you might. And the, the interesting thing is if you work in the functional or the department dimension, then you, you most likely, um, measured on the standardization, cost efficiency and all of those things. And then it's counter-productive for you to take on a new product that adds, or, or that is requiring a lot of change in the way that you would operate when you support this product. For instance, if you've a been selling, I don't know, traditional books, if we make it really simple, and then somebody comes up with, Oh, we should try to do sell eBooks. It might be a strategic, very good thing. But you, as the selling department will have a really hard time of actually being able to do that. So you will most likely try to avoid it, for as long as possible. Now, this is a very extreme example, but I think we have those sort of, um, discussions all the time. Product people come up with new ways of doing things and the current organization, and the c urrent w ay o f working is refusing to take them on because that will create a lot of change for them, t hat they do not see as valuable in their own sub-optimization way of looking at things. So, u m, so that is, u m, something that at least I see in a lot of organizations. To come back to the connection to the IT, a lot of these things are hard to change, a re wired into the IT systems. That's why t hey're, t hey're h ard. They have been optimized. T hey h ave been standardized and maybe even automated in the current IT s etup. And if somebody comes along and wants to do something differently, it will require a lot of rework of the current way of doing things a nd the systems.

R.M.: 15:12

So you're touching the systems part. Just before that, you touch also something that's very dear to me, the, um, you didn't say it that way, but I think it's what you touched. It's performance measures. You talked about the production they're measured and their productivity is very important and they're measured on some things. And if we try to change anything that affects their measures of performance, it's not going to be received well.

Annika: 15:37

No. And I think we need to, we need to be aware of that. To some extent I am, uh, I am humble for it too, because they understand their position as well. They want to do their job as good as possible, and they want to, like everybody else, getting promotion and getting... Take the next step. And then you act according to the logic that you are supposed to. So even though as a consultant, I usually am, uh, I work with large organizations and as a consultant, I am very free in saying these things, but I'm also very aware of the way that people are in the system and has to play by this, by the rules of the system. Because that's how you survive. That's how you stay and advance without being too... Yeah.

R.M.: 16:19

That's very interesting. I like, I like that. I think incentives are key to many, many, many things, including dysfunctional behaviors, uh, that are based on incentives that aren't the right place or not adapted adequately. So I kind of, I kind of... forced you to go into some other direction. You were going through a third role and I just don't want you to lose...

Annika: 16:40

Well, I can take that one. And then we can go to, because there were also touching on this combination, or this balance, between operation and change. And I think we need to, to have a lot of talk about that one as well, but they will take the third version, or the third dimension before we go there. And that is the customer experience, the outside view of what we're having. And I seen when I worked at a Swedish company, how that is really emerging into a super important perspective that we really need to take good care of. We cannot chop-up the customer journey saying, we take care of the marketing part. You take care of the sales part, and you guys are take care of the actual delivery of the service or the thing, whatever. We need to see that as a holistic experience and as something that we should improve, regardless of what our messy inside looks like. I mean, it's not up to the customer to know whether I should call the campaign service number, or if I should call customer service. I call you, you help me. That's the, that's the thing, right? So, so this, um, way of combining, like I said, the value stream and the products with the customer experience as well is really important because, otherwise we would run the risk of being this internal..."We're perfect internally, but nobody cares". You know, that is not a good place to be. So we need to take that into account as well. In my experience, the the awareness of this comes in steps. Sort of you first get your internal system, you sense make that, and then you see the value streams. And then the external perspective is getting more traction as somebody after a while, realizes, okay, we need to have somebody that is actually taking responsibility for the entire customer journey, customer experience, and work with we would like that one to be. And of course, that's the number of touch points. You have IT there as well. So IT is everywhere. And we d id not sort of leave that for the basement guys. But needs to be really also like the others, like I said, close to where we have the interaction with the customer and the feedback loops and how can we make this better and combine that with the products and our internal way of working a nd capabilities. It's this entire system that we need to take into account instead of like, at least my experience is that we come from a very well we think of IT and also architecture where I come from it has had really internal view o n t hings. We've been really caring a lot about the information, the systems, the processes, our own processes, but we're not here for ourselves. We're here for somebody else. Why don't we pay more attention to the people that we are offering something to, or that we want to be part of their experience rather than inviting them into ours? So that is the third one. And I think that, like I said, with the discussion about the product and the way we look at them, the same goes for this dimension, with the customer. We need to sense make it and, and really give people that are working in these dimensions more muscles. More, I don't know if it's money or if it's, positions, but they need to be stronger so that they can balance the other ones. So that was the third one. I don't know is this... do you recognize this or does it resonate with your way of looking at things too?

R.M.: 20:00

Of course it does. And, when you say being stronger, because, you know, the original question was about how does IT should engage i n the organization, how would you see that strength being made of?

Annika: 20:15

Oh, I saw some really exciting examples when I worked up to two years in a traveling company in Europe. And they worked for the Nordic branch. And when they moved into an Agile way, working in smaller teams that were really sitting close to their parts of the business, not the business, but their parts of the business. We had some fantastic examples of how they would change the customer experience that we were working on. This really classical my page, my pages, where you know, where you can get your travel information and you can have some interaction with the company through these pages. And we were adding things and we were doing that in real time with the business people of this part and the IT and developers. And we were just molding it in real time. And it was so fast. It was just super. And they were adding things and then realize, okay, this was too hard, we need to remove that we have this instead. And suddenly we w ere i n this design-as-you-go mode rather than these more traditional, you know, we have this customer experience project and we're g oing to deliver in two y ears time. N ow we're just doing whiteboards and PowerPoints. No, that was this constence. Because we had the team o f the knowledge of the customer relationship and all those things, and the technology, w ith the systems that in real time d o change this and improve, as we saw what people were doing. And that is just, it was magic. It was so fast and really, really good. S o i t can be done, but you need to have teams that have all these competencies as one. A nd, you know, good business ideas came from all roles. It was not just the so-called business people that said to the IT people what to do. It was, it was a group that worked together and created new things with new ideas. So it's doable. It's just a matter of getting the right people in the room and giv ing th em space.

R.M.: 22:11

So there were no handovers,

Annika: 22:13

No handovers! It was, it was a handover I'd say of trust to the group from,... Of course there are management layers, and then there was no detailing from them, but it was rather,"This is what we want to achieve and, and how would you take this challenge?" How would you, how would you do, start? And then the discussion started eventually we started with these changes. I think it was handover of the right things rather than the wrong things. As in trust. And as in they have this, you know, Agile has this North Star of what is it that we want to achieve. What type of experience do w e want to create? What type of behavior? A lot of thoughts around why. And then the"how" was left to the people best suited to create it and that was this combination of people. But I am well aware of this is very far from where most organizations are. But I think we need to hear about those examples to be inspired and to say that this can be done, and it does not have to be super huge changes. But maybe there are two huge cultural changes with w ho's allowed to do what. So that is one of those e xperience that I would like to put m y magic wand: this a faster way of getting change. Because that kind of takes us into the next area that I was thinking of. And that is how we decide on change. How do we set up change initiatives? I mean, as I said in the beginning, I have a background in program management and all of those things and, and nothing could run for shorter time than three years. This was 10, 15 years back. And now with those time horizons, nobody is talking about a five-year plan. They can be a five-year strategy, maybe pointing out what is important, what plants, no, you don't do that. So, so there is this need to get closer connections between the operating of the organization, with all these dimensions and the change. And being able to do smaller things more often, at least in the areas where I am now, there is, there is so much uncertainty. I think this year is just a huge uncertainty, so we can't plan for more than... I d on't k now the situation in Canada, but here in Sweden, we... There's this vaccine everybody's happy. And then somebody says, no, it's not going to be, we're not off the hook because of the vaccine, because of th eir n umber of new things that comes up on the table, it's shifting all the time. So we need to have a way of allowing ourselves to do small things and try, i n a more experimental way. So that we can both learn, but also act faster on things that are either threats or opportunities. When seeing that, in my head at least, to get that to work in a good way, we need to be able to have two modes of, o f a group. It's either the operational mode where you do your daily business, or it's the change mode. If we were to be able to work with both the daily business and change, maybe not at the same time, but the same people, some of, maybe not all operation people need to be involved, but the more people that are involved from the operation side, the faster you can actually get those changes into real life, I think, and avoid thes e pro grams, projects, we are doing it and the n you're training everybody and then you implement and then all the cons ultancies run off and nobody really know how things are connected. So, thi s, thi s is another integration like I spoke about in the beginning, more of owning your own area, both the operation parts and the idea of how do we develop it further. So these are ideas that I think that we could be better in exploring and actually starting to use. But still I realize that this is a fairly far from where most organizations are. But I think we would benefit from a way of thinking like this in more cases. And that kind of takes me to the other thing with the uncertainty and the belief that the need for, for realizing that we cannot know. I t hink I'm thinking of this Cynefin framework, Dave Snowden, and we need to understand where we are and better navigate and what domain, or in what logic are we working. And I think that more people are actually in this complex area due to the current changes, of course, but also due to the trends in the entire, what should we call it, in the entire business world, going from products to services, and how that is changing organizations. Or actually maybe forcing organizations to change in terms of how they look at what they're offering and how they look at the interactions with their customers. And this of course has huge implications for how you would look at IT as well. Because we need to find ways of using IT, but with, less, where t here's more flexibility. I really liked the article that you sent me a few weeks, few days about the, the guy from the festival business. That they were really working with this idea of how we should get rid of the stuff af ter the festival. That is like one of the starting points. And that is an interesting shift. Maybe we shouldn't like get rid of all IT, but maybe we should have this ambition of being really able to use it in different ways and have a higher expectation of flexibility when we go in there. And also have this idea of things should be able to be able to b e re p la ced where, with a hi gher p ace than usually thought of when you do these things. So there is this constant change. There is something here that we need to look at. And rather, how do we make ourselves changeable. I don't know if that's an English word, but in my head, it makes sense.

R.M.: 27:53

Annika. You said something that's, I don't know if you could expand a little bit more on that. You said"going from products to services". What did you mean by that?

Annika: 28:02

I think this is such an interesting thing. If you think of, I mean, the, one of the first businesses that did this, it was the record business. I mean, we went from buying new records to jumping off to, I think Napster, I was at least part of that generation that used to have used that for awhile. And then now we're into Spotify and all these streaming services. And it has really changed how we consume music and other, these expanded to pods and to a lot of other things and movies and videos and all of those things. These were early examples, but I am currently working at a company that is Scania. It's a truck company. And they're also seeing this shift from the focusing of the car or the truck into services, supporting the truck. And then even now they're talking about how they want to be part of creating and designing a sustainable transportation system. And that is really a shift from being very focused on the engineering parts of public truck to a system of t ransportation, wh ich i s a lot more. And maybe the trucks are ju st parts. It could be any truck. It's a system tha t th e y ar e ac tually sort of aiming for delivering. I think that that is the same transition that most parts of our business wil l go through. We call it digitalization, or, you kn o w, t he digital new services, but in essence, it's: digital and IT gives us abilities to wrap a lot of extra services around physical products. I mean, you know, internet of things, i n terconnectivity, all those things, and it' s ju st gon na mo ve on. It's just, I mean, you cannot hide from this. I think everybody has to have an answer to how do we respond to this, or even better, how do we design for this so that you as an organization has some kind of idea of wh at you're going to do rather than being this force, forces you to do something. I think you should kin d of re cognize thi s an d then do something out of your position and your tradition and your strengths that you already have as an organization with open eyes rather than being taken off gu a rd.

R.M.: 30:12

That's very interesting. I read this book from...(I just can't recall his name). It's about 10 years old, probably. It's about services. And one of the statements of this author is that everything's a service Saying even a car, a car, you could say, Oh, car is physical. You can touch it and so on. But you're not selling a car, you're selling a transportation service, a way to go from point A to point B. It happens to be a car, but, you know, it could be something else. And seeing your business as, moving people from point A to point B is different than seeing your business as constructing cars.

Annika: 30:52

Yeah. And also I think with this push for sustainability, sharing economy and all those things and other generations coming that are not so obsessed with owning stuff. I think this is just going to be, more and more explored, and a number of ways that we can't even imagine. W hat, would it be to not have a car? W ell, t hen you have autonomous cars on top of that. I hope I can live for long as I can see.

R.M.: 31:20

Second question is of course magic wands do not exist. So if you had to, and you're a consultant, so that's, that's good news. So if you had to suggest where to start for organizations, what would you suggest? Where, should they start their journey to changing the way that IT engages into the organization?

Annika: 31:43

I think the first part would be to get the IT and the different parts of the business. I'm not going to say the business, but the different business domains or different business departments, or whatever, and see how you can connect the people that are working with the, I don't know, the IT systems for marketing or campaign, how can you co-locate them so that they can be closer to the parts of the business that they are supporting. So you can start building that, that group and also start with, with them hearing each other's conversations. What is it that they care about? What is it that is the next thing around the corner that has not yet been turned into a change initiative or a new request or something. So that co-location, to start to learn from each other and see the IT as an integrated part. And I know that this is in some cases, a r eally long journey to do that, but I think by putting them in the same room, or I do n't k n ow, even to get those conversations going and connecting the dots that you already know with some new dots and seeing this as a whole. I usually, when I do this in practice, I walk between different parts of the organization. So I si t s ome days near the IT people or near the business people, depending on what type of assignment th ey h ave. So you need to get them together. That's sort of the first step one. And the next thing that I find really valuable is to start se nse-making t he enterprise system as a whole. What I said with the internal ecosystem of how the systems are connected, how they are supporting the different processes. And if yo u c an connect that with organizational parts an d m aybe both business capabilities that have all these things in them and get a shared understanding of how are we structured in, on our insight with our different parts. Once you have that in some shape or form start starting to sense make the external, I call it the external ecosystem, but it's usually starts with the customer journey. What types of journeys does our customers take when they interact with us? And how is there an ambition of how we would like that to change? Is it different for different customers an d s o o n? And then at some stage, I a lso ad d t his product ecosystem that I co uld t alk ab out t he value streams. How are the different product portfolios using the different parts of the organization to create th eir o fferings and to offer them to deliver and so on. So create this shared map that is not an it map. It's the understanding of the entire, s ystem in pl ay. This might sound very complicated and takes a l ot of time and so on, but it d oes not have to take that long once you kind of know what you're looking for. And with this, usually there are a lot of good conversations that are sparked and that people see new things, they understand how things could be made better. And also there's this, you kno w, if organizations are stressed and they rea lly need to do something, there is tension, there are fee lings, people are, you know, getting into conflict, but this is the way of making it a bit more:"As a matter of fact, this is how it is". How can we from this act to take ourselves to a be t ter position rather than saying that it's IT's fault or it's the busi ness' fau lt, or ther e is t he management that doesn't understand anything. I real ized tha t this is just one part. We also need to sens e mak e the other processes involved here. And that is a change process. How do we invest in change? How does this organization take decisions on changes that they want to make happen? This could be, how do you s ense- making and m ake people aware of how does an idea go from an idea to an actual change that is affecting how we work today or affect ing a new way of interacting with the customers and so on. So that is also something that we need, that I find valuable in just get a shared understanding of what it is. It's u sual ly very messy with these chang e decision processes and change. How do you make change happen? But if we sense make it and we mak e it clear, then there are usually also here, good conversations on how can we make this faster? How can we make sure that we define change initiatives in a way that it makes sense and not to just have an IT project without the rest of the things that needs to be in place from the beginning as well. So these are two overviews in two d ifferent, I think, maps that I use to, to create this shared understanding of what is in play. And, but wi th this, I do it as IT as an integrated part of this, rather than something on the side or something afterword.

R.M.: 36:28

That's very interesting. What I'm visualizing is that you're proposing that first people should work together, sit together. So I see like people sitting together, understanding their respective work. And then understanding the bigger organization the whole system, how do we work? How do we operate? And then going even bigger understanding the bigger system in which the organization is living in, which is often called the ecosystems. Are you saying that it should come first from inside? An d t h en...

Annika: 37:00

I think that really depends on what is the force, what is triggering the change. And at least my experience is that most organizations are kind of happy as long as things are, as they usually have been. But then there are some external force that triggers them to do something. And that's where they wake up. And then I m ay also, even though I told you about the different steps as in one, two, three, there is rather than making loops over these and running from the different dimensions, sitting together, look at the e nterprise system and understand the change portfolio, then sit together again. So it's more of a c ircular way of building this knowledge, rather than saying that we start with insight. It's sometimes t alk about we're running over these questions first, r eally, really fast. And then as we evolve, a s we build this knowledge together, it i s deeper in all these areas. So it's not a s step one, two, three it's rather one two three, one two three, one, two, three!

R.M.: 37:58

Annika Klyver. Thank you very much for the time you spent today on this. This has been, enlightening and very instructive. So, thank you again, and hopefully we'll, we'll have another podcast on similar or connected subjects in the future.

Annika: 38:13

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for exploring these questions together with me. And I think this is really exciting. And the more you talk about that, the more questions and ideas pop up in my head at least. So thank you.

R.M.: 38:29

Thanks for listening and stay tuned or click on the next podcast for more expert advice on radical change in corporate IT.