Running your company at two speeds — from mckinsey.com by Oliver Bossert, Jürgen Laartz, and Tor Jakob Ramsøy
Digital competition may dictate a new organizational architecture in which emerging digital processes coexist with traditional ones.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The retailer’s board responded by creating a new budgeting and approval process in which projects supporting major digital strategic thrusts are now treated separately from the rest of the IT budget. Solutions like this, in our experience, are an effective means of addressing digital timing challenges. Many companies need to create a two-speed architecture—a fast speed for functions that address evolving customer experiences and must change rapidly, and a transaction speed for the remaining functions, where the pace of adjustment can remain more measured.
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Make the digital dialogue more strategic
Solutions like the retailer’s work only if there is clear agreement on what constitutes a digital priority worthy of a fast speed. In our experience, that rarely happens, because far too often, the digital dialogue never becomes sufficiently strategic to galvanize top management. At the retailer, by contrast, top management brought its budgeting challenges to the board, which approved the new, two-speed ground rules. Top management has also begun revising its agenda to elevate the importance of discussing strategic technology initiatives, including comparisons between them and other major thrusts, such as entering new regions.
Achieving this level of dialogue often means changing mind-sets, such as the common one that IT spending is a “tax” required to “keep the lights on.” …Once it’s clear that certain types of technology spending are an investment in new business strategies, it becomes much easier to agree that the resulting initiatives should be implemented quickly.
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Evolve the organization
When the IT organization is asked to release new digital functions on a faster deployment cycle, it requires new levels of agility and coordination that may require substantial organizational change.
Along these lines, see:
How administrators can enhance online learning programs — from ecampusnews.com by Meris Stansbury
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Studying the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), Hoey and other researchers from Crown College, Fresno Pacific University, and Trinity Christian College examined the impact of administrative structure and admins on the outcomes of online student enrollment, number of online programs, and efficiency of online operations.
What the study overwhelmingly found was that both admins and admin structure have significant influence, which could help “private colleges gain a foothold in the competitive online market.”
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However, since around 2007, researchers have noted a move away from the fully-integrated model to one where online programs are operated and administered by an entirely separate academic division.