Breaking Digital Gridlock, + Website

CHAPTER 10Who Can Break Gridlock?

The most important aspect of any organization is its people and its culture. Your people are the key to breaking the gridlock. Sadly, they are most likely to be causing the stoppage somewhere up ahead. It could be for many reasons—they could be afraid of risk, or perhaps they are not in an empowered position, or worse yet, in over their head. In the evolving digital world, people need to be organized in the right way to have a fighting chance.

The first step to breaking the gridlock at your organization is to assess your organizational chart as it relates to digital. The goal of this assessment is to identify the people who are currently driving your online offerings. For many years, any technology or online products have been pushed into departments that aren't necessarily the right place but the closest fit at the time. ATMs pushed into payments, home banking is often found in IT, even sometimes marketing, and now analytics seems to be getting forced into the accounting division.

It's OK to temporarily house a new, emerging, or evolving channel or service in the closest fitting area, but it must be reviewed to make sure it doesn't deserve an area of its own. This challenge often leads to difficulties for the program owners to get the resources they need and to be understood by their leadership. Here is a great example: If every time your analytics ...