Trust: The foundation for successful digital transformation

In today’s dynamic, digitally evolving business landscape, establishing a strong foundation of trust within an organization is more vital than ever. In this article, we look at why trust is so critical in an enterprise and offer some key approaches for establishing a solid foundation of trust.

In an enterprise, trust can be fragile. Trust can be difficult to build, and all too easy to destroy. Despite this dynamic, trust remains an essential objective for enterprise leaders. That’s because trust is a fundamental enabler of business success. A recent PwC survey indicates an overwhelming 91 percent of CEOs acknowledge the pivotal role of trust in achieving success.

Without a culture of trust, executives face several formidable challenges:

• Lack of transparency. In the absence of clear visibility into plans and progress, inefficiencies proliferate, and mistrust grows.
• Issues with tracking progress. In large enterprises, it can be a significant effort to track progress in the delivery of products and services to customers. These challenges grow even more pronounced in tracking progress across intricate digital transformation initiatives. When trust is compromised, these efforts grow virtually impossible.
• Difficulty in alignment and issue resolution. When there’s a lack of trust, it engenders misalignment between teams and organizations, particularly between business and IT. This stifles collaboration and creates bottlenecks in key workflows, such as issue resolution.

When it comes to establishing trust, organizations currently fall into two very different camps:

1. On one hand, there are organizations in which teams are struggling with unrealistic strategies and manually maintained spreadsheets. These teams are hindered by an absence of trust in their data, which stifles decision-making and overall effectiveness. Ultimately, these businesses run the increasing risk of falling behind in their markets.
2. On the other hand, there are organizations with teams that are equipped with value-based plans and metrics. In contrast, these teams have complete confidence in their data and understand how their investments are performing. In this way, teams gain the ability to optimize value delivery and adapt more quickly.

When organizations grapple with unreliable reports and moving targets, the true performance of strategic investments is obscured. The consequence is an impaired ability to plan effectively and deliver timely results, which can ultimately lead to digital transformation initiatives failing.

Trust can be fragile and easily erodes when the bedrock of decision-making—data—becomes unreliable. Recalibrating enterprises around cohesive digital operating models sustained by a singular real-time data source is essential in establishing a solid foundation for trust.  These digital operating models help enhance visibility, foster trust, and deliver tangible value. This involves aligning the goals of both business and IT teams around a customer-centric approach. Leaders need to emphasize shared outcomes and objectives and establish clear success metrics.

In pursuit of these efforts, Value Stream Management (VSM) emerges as a powerful methodology, representing a key way to actualize these digital operating models. By orchestrating a set of practices geared towards enhancing the flow of value within a software development organization, VSM aligns processes and workflows with the specific preferences and needs of customers.

This alignment naturally cultivates the creation of superior products and services. At its core, VSM involves a comprehensive analysis and optimization of the end-to-end value flow within the organization. This holistic approach enables teams to promote visibility and alignment, so they can more effectively build organizational trust and deliver customer value.

Trust stands as a cornerstone in the digital transformation journey. Whether teams are just getting started or well along the way in their journeys, VSM is indispensable for fostering trust, enabling seamless alignment, and propelling the organization toward a future defined by enhanced value delivery.

To learn more, be sure to download our white paper, “Improve Organizational Trust.” This white paper offers an in-depth look at the challenges teams encounter as they seek to build trust, ensure visibility, and deliver value to customers. Review this paper and find out how you can resolve these issues and establish a culture of heightened trust throughout the organization.

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