South Africa Angling to Survive in the 4th Industrial Revolution
Building SA’s 4IR readiness capability at high velocity
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ Make quick strategic moves under disruptive conditions
+ South African executives have to make quick strategic moves under conditions where technological and competitive change is disruptive. They will need to make these strategic decisions even though market information is out-dated or non-existent. This calls for a new intensity, focus and willingness to experiment among the executive and top management teams, but this kind of risk-taking and improvisation is not unusual for effective organisations.
How do we ensure the longevity of our organisations given these trends? What capabilities will companies need to survive in the 4IR era?
+ Apply lessons learnt from complex, large-scale IT implementations
+ Implementing these technologies was often high risk and so the results one achieved was always mixed. Depending on the type of IT project, your failure rate was likely to be above 65% and more recently with projects in business intelligence and analytics and big data, failure rates can be as high as 80-90%.
+ I want to claim that the same three principles that underpin the successful implementation of high-risk IT in organisations underpin 4IR readiness. I am willing to bet these three enduring and paradoxical principles will be present in the long-lived 4IR organisations and notably absent from the short-lived ones that failed to cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity that defines this 4IR era.
+ Principle 1: Create a high performance team despite the talent scarcity
+ Principle 2: Take calculated risks
+ Principle 3: Make major decisions quickly and carefully
Source: ITWeb. Rennie Naidoo, Building SA’s 4IR readiness capability at high velocity…
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