Preface

May the Sheniu officials, who make the conditions of the lives of men, not cause my name to stink.

—The Egyptian Book of the Dead

But what does it really matter to me how So-and-so expounds his text? The main thing is that I should get some sleep.

—Epictetus, Discourses

In my role at Amazon Web Services (AWS), I meet with executives of large enterprises who are leaping to “transform” their organizations but are stumbling over cultural patterns, organizational issues, rigid processes, and implacable bureaucracy. They know that their organizations have a history of brilliant innovation, a leadership position in their markets, a passion for serving their customers . . . but somehow, despite their feeling that change is urgent, despite their worries about disruption, despite the innovation they see around them, their troops are not advancing.

I have seen a pattern to these cases. While everyone can see that digital transformation has something to do with digital technology, many don’t see that it also has to do with digital technologists—or, more have precisely, the role technologists play in their companies. Ever since IT departments have existed, companies have developed ways of working with IT that actually hold the whole business back as it attempts to enter the digital age.

Having experienced both the CIO and CEO roles, I wanted to write a book about how non-IT leaders in the enterprise can work with IT to succeed in the digital world.

My last book, A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, was written for IT professionals. In it I discussed recent changes in IT practice and what those changes mean for the CIO and other IT leaders. As I was writing it, I realized that these new ways of managing IT—the technique known as DevOps, in particular—were thoroughly inconsistent with the way IT has traditionally been incorporated into the broader enterprise of which it is part. At the same time, studies have shown that these new IT practices lead to vastly better business outcomes. So, I said, the CIO must change this relationship, accepting responsibility for business outcomes and taking a seat at the business strategy table.

The feedback I received from the IT community regarding the book was flattering: they loved the illustrations and my references to obscure kinds of pasta, although there were some objections to my controversial remarks on strozzapreti. But when it came to my main thesis—that the business-IT divide must be dissolved—they suggested that someone needed to inform the business community of this. Sensing another opportunity to lock myself in my room for long hours with coffee and a word processing program, I promised them that I would write something for the non-IT folks they interacted with, looking at the same questions but from the business’s point of view.

Guess what? It finally hit me that I was really looking at the same problem from two sides. Enterprises are filled with technologists who are trying to bring their companies into the digital age and who are focused on achieving business value with technology. And they’re frustrated trying to do so. Enterprises are also filled with non-technology business leaders who are trying to bring their companies into the digital age and achieve business value with technology. And they are just as frustrated in doing so. And here I am, a former CIO and CEO armed with a keyboard sitting between warring parties in violent agreement.

Digital transformation exposes a number of tensions that have existed within organizations. The tension between those who, according to stereotype, get pleasure from accomplishing business outcomes and those who find it in working with technology, is one. But there are also tensions between moving quickly and retaining control, between improvising and following a plan, and between the creation of new competitive advantages and the destruction of old ones. These opposites seem impossible to reconcile; it is war, with brief periods of peace as temporary accommodations are reached.

It reminds me of something I experienced back when I was CIO at Intrax Cultural Exchange. One day my IT organization received a helpdesk ticket request from an employee that read, “Please solve Israeli–Palestinian problem!”

I was proud that they thought so highly of my IT organization that they would send us a request like that, and my team was eager to help. It only took us a moment to figure out what the ticket writer had really meant—there was a database issue that made it hard to record the biographical data of certain applicants, but no one wanted to fix it because of the sensitive politics. It was what the IT world would call a reference data problem. The employee just wanted us to fix the database.

I must admit that we never did fix the Israeli–Palestinian problem. But organizational oppositions I’ve described are a far more tractable problem, especially with the tools available to us today. We merely need to stop using old mental models to manage the new realities of the digital world.

Throughout history, philosophers, scientists, authors, and religious thinkers have noted tensions between opposing forces. Yin and yang in Chinese philosophy, the forces of good and evil in Zoroastrianism, creation and destruction in Hinduism, thesis and antithesis in Hegel’s dialectic. In each of these cases the great thinkers identified these tensions as the forces that drive the world forward—that account, in other words, for transformation and change.

If heads around the company are nodding yes to digital transformation, we should take advantage of all the head bobbling and get going. The route to digital wonderfulness can best be explained, I tell you, through references to Napoleon and early warfare, to Krishna driving a chariot between the Pandavas and Kauravas, to the toys with shaking heads that one finds across cultures and geographies, and to dead ancient Egyptians. You can trust me on this.