Center for Enablement (C4E)
DefinitionA C4E is an entity that is capable of driving exponential change, not just linear change often associated with the all-too-common, centralized Centers of Excellence (CoE). For our context and purpose each C4E is then a building block to creating the new Digital Operating Model, enabling business divisions – including but not exclusively IT – to truly work in new ways through innovation. The end result is higher levels of adaptability throughout the underlying Modern Digital Workplace. To business leaders, particularly those that do not profit directly from knowledge work, technology costs not directly associated with making another unit of product is difficult to justify, even if the technology removes drudgery and mundane tasks. This is what makes autonomous AI agents so interesting because if you gave business-minded knowledge workers the ability to interact with Agent Swarms capable of doing IT and HR-related tasks, then it lowers the cost of doing business by 10,000%.
The Enablement element is not in name only, it is critical for allowing the new ways of working to emerge. A C4E is often associated with challenging the status quo and disrupting highly governed best practices. Ideally used as a network connection point for any complex topics, issues, or problems that a Complex Adaptive System (CAS), like a product team, is continuously navigating. To get started, one has to ask: How great of a Modern Digital Workplace is needed (perspective of executives) or desired (employee perspective)? The answers will undoubtedly be different, but collectively they drive the expectations and costs associated with developing and delivering Knowledge Worker experiences throughout the Modern Digital Workplace product. An external C4E leveraging Staff on Demand can provide access to highly skilled talent at a lower cost than traditional outsource providers, largely due to disintermediation.
Building A Shared Understanding
Thought Leader Spotlight
Stop wasting your time and energy on building Centers of Excellence (CoE) when the context – like Innovation, Ways of Working, or Agile – and what you seek from them is emergent. A CoE is naturally oriented towards addressing Best Practice within an Ordered System, providing the necessary structure for governance, efficiency, and Frederick Taylor’s one best way of achieving Operational Excellence that was often desired throughout the past Industrial Revolutions.
The Library is our approach to showcasing the great work of various Thought Leaders, particularly the ones that have had a profound impact on developing The Value Network concepts; unbeknownst to many of them. Their inspirational work needs to be shared in such a way that it becomes foundational to a C4E.
The following authors and books are not listed in any particular order with the hope that many more are to come as they are discovered.
“Digital business transformation is a journey that trumps its destination, a journey that asks businesses to reimagine and rapidly realize new ways of working and satisfying consumer expectations.”
— Nigel Vaz, Digital Business Transformation
Jonathan Smart
It’s no secret that we are living in the Digital Age. Technology companies make up seven of the world’s ten largest firms by market capitalization.
Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future. Links: Website | LinkedIn | Publisher
Damon Centola
When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is. The real story of social change is more complex. When we are exposed to a new idea, our social networks guide our responses in striking and surprising ways. Links: Website | Publisher
Aaron Dignan
He’s found that nearly everyone, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, points to the same frustrations: lack of trust, bottlenecks in decision making, siloed functions and teams, meeting and email overload, tiresome budgeting, short-term thinking, and more.
That’s because we fail to recognize that organizations aren’t machines to be predicted and controlled. They’re complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released.
Dignan says you can’t fix a team, department, or organization by tinkering around the edges. Over the years, he has helped his clients completely reinvent their operating systems—the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture—with extraordinary success.
Links: Website | LinkedIn | Publisher
Thales Teixeira
As Teixeira makes clear, the nature of competition has fundamentally changed. Using innovative new business models, startups are stealing customers by breaking the links in how consumers discover, buy and use products and services. By decoupling the customer value chain, these startups, instead of taking on the Unilevers and Nikes, BMW’s and Sephoras of the world head on, peel away a piece of the consumer purchasing process. Birchbox offered women a new way to sample beauty products from a variety of companies from the convenience of their homes, without having to visit a store. Turo doesn’t compete with GM. Instead, it offers people the benefit of driving without having to own a car themselves. Links: Website | Publisher
Soumyasanto Sen
We are living in an uncertain world that is rapidly changing with an overload of information and a continual rise of technologies. Automation, the gig economy, digital platforms and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work and are having a significant impact on the workforce, workplace and the HR function. Digital HR Strategy is crucial reading for all HR practitioners and leaders wanting to ensure that their organization adapts to this changing and increasingly competitive environment by creating a strategic approach for sustainable transformation which goes beyond conventional digital HR propositions. Links: Website | LinkedIn | Publisher
Nigel Thurlow
The Flow System enables business growth through eliminating non-value-added activities, fostering an environment for innovation, enabling the rapid delivery of value, and shortening the time to market. The Flow System provides a re-imagined system for organizations to understand complex problems, embrace distributed leadership, and build high performing teams. Links: Website | Publisher
Sangeet Paul Choudary
Platform Revolution teaches newcomers how to start and run a successful platform business, explaining ways to identify prime markets and monetize networks. Addressing current business leaders, the authors reveal strategies behind some of today’s up-and-coming platforms, such as Tinder and SkillShare, and explain how traditional companies can adapt in a changing marketplace. The authors also cover essential issues concerning security, regulation, and consumer trust, while examining markets that may be ripe for a platform revolution, including healthcare, education, and energy. Links: Website | LinkedIn | Publisher
Gary Klein
Insights — like Darwin’s understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick’s breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA — can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed — or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don’t, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery.
Links: LinkedIn | Publisher
Mik Kersten
In Project to Product, Value Stream Network pioneer and technology business leader Dr. Mik Kersten introduces the Flow Framework—a new way of seeing, measuring, and managing software delivery. The Flow Framework will enable your company’s evolution from project-oriented dinosaur to product-centric innovator that thrives in the Age of Software. If you’re driving your organization’s transformation at any level, this is the book for you. Links: Website | LinkedIn | Publisher
“When people hesitate to embrace a new idea, there are two broad explanations. Either the idea lacks appeal (insufficient Fuel), or a Friction is blocking progress.”
— Authors, The Human Element