Skeptical sectors need confidence beyond a business case for transformation

At a recent installment of IBM’s Think event in London, the confidence barrier to transformation of all kinds—digital, sustainability, and business model—stuck with me, especially in skeptical sectors traditionally considered digital laggards and culturally resistant to change. Confidence means more than a formal business case for transformation. It goes deeper into relationships between partners, collaboration throughout systems, and organizational culture. Leaders in these sectors must work to embed this deeper confidence throughout their organizations and showcase to their ecosystems what success looks like. Here, we look at law and the UK National Health Service (NHS) examples, plus IBM’s Client Engineering approach to getting existing and potential clients over the initial confidence hurdle.

Separately, we’ve published how a similar type of confidence is vital for all services firms addressing sustainability—whether they’re financial services firms or providing a mixture of consulting, technology, engineering, and business process services.

Lawyers are the first to admit their industry is risk averse—especially regarding new technology

One of the global legal sector’s more entrepreneurial voices at IBM Think said changing the industry’s mindset for technology adoption requires more than a business case. Examples are developing that include applying AI to scan vast quantities of documents and summarize evidence (humans in the loop remain essential in a heavily regulated space). But the law profession as a whole requires a new confidence built on collaboration and culture change before a technology can find its potential

Law firms are generally risk averse. Maybe out of a hundred lawyers, there would be one, like me, who would say technology is a friend rather than a foe. Building confidence in technology is essential. Most lawyers don’t think about technology when it goes right—only when it goes wrong.

– Simon Levine, Managing Partner and Global Co-CEO, DLA Piper UK LLP

The UK National Health Service is a complex, fragmented, and overwhelmed organization—making cultural confidence in technology even more essential

The NHS remains hampered by legacy processes (including a LOT of paper), overwhelmed staff, and the fragmented complexity of more than 200 trusts, partially due to lingering pandemic effects but more so to chronic underfunding and understaffing. Transforming operations and technology adoption is a mammoth task. An effort to map the NHS’ various user “personas” has been part of combatting its problems. For IBM and partner Nordcloud, the personas’ cloud adoption maturities, as outlined at Think London, were useful. NHS staff were categorized as skeptical of change, inspired but unsure how to start, taking the low-hanging cloud fruit, or cloud champions.

Lessons from the NHS cloud center of excellence (COE) echo the need for confidence beyond a business case into systems and cultures. The mapped persona profiles and key decision makers throughout the disconnected organization required tailored use cases and training to instill confidence. The NHS needs policy guardrails it can innovate confidently within, knowing it can fail while still maintaining standards of patient care. Existing success stories from similar settings and personas are also vital. Established ways of working must be contextualized into technology—including the benefits to people who will use the technology, not just the top-level business case often positioned as financial and disconnected from the reality of most roles.

One NHS example is the gamification of cybersecurity attack responses to test end users’ preparedness for a real incident; developers can better understand and incorporate the end users’ responses and design accordingly—further installing confidence throughout the system and staff.

The Bottom Line: Business confidence to press ahead with new projects—technology and otherwise—is about more than a formal business case. Leaders in organizations and industries resistant to change can help reach this next level.

Partner organizations have a vital role in helping organizations reach the systemic and cultural confidence they need. At IBM Think, IBM’s pre-sales Client Engineering team outlined its pro-bono process of building confidence and de-risking client investments in its technology, strategy, and other business services. Client Engineering brings teams of designers, developers, solution architects, data scientists, security experts, dev ops experts, and others to work with clients and “bring IBM Technologies and Services to life.” Crucially, this process occurs before a contract is signed.

IBM’s investment in Client Engineering, provided to potential clients without cost, shows the importance of technology and services firms providing confidence to their clients to move along roadmaps and take advantage of the benefits of technology and strategies we know are up for grabs. Nowhere will this be as important as in the industries and organizations that for years, if not decades, have resisted change of all its forms and waves. Going forward, they’ll need a new approach to confidence from their leaders and partner organizations to realize the importance and opportunities of technology, sustainability, and much more.