Digicode Motivations

Stepping into a new role is always both exciting and equally as challenging. But what really drives us as professionals when we decide to make a big change in our careers? I know the motivations for many differ, but what made me to make a change  from years of experience in a technical career to a leadership role was the desire to get things done the right way and therefore make an impact on the world around me. I have had the opportunity in my career to observe dozens of companies, sometimes as an employee and mostly as a consultant.  I have seen over and over again a pattern of similar challenges that most organizations face – there is a disconnect between technology and business.

The business side of an organization is often frustrated because the technology department cannot adequately serve the their needs. Requested changes and improvements are implemented slowly or postponed or worse yet de-prioritized. Performance and meaningful outputs are  lagging and unfortunately rarely covering all of the business priorities. Competitors are disrupting the market with new products, services and business models. The quality of the implemented technology is not stellar. And unfortunately often times the technology roadmap does not match the  business roadmap. These are just few of the business side challenges I have observed in my experience.

On the technology side of the coin, tech departments are almost always underfunded, understaffed,  have to deal with the problems associated with aging technology stacks, all while trying to support ever changing business objectives. Additionally, there is a constant battle to acquire and retain talent and this talent problem is  only getting worse. Big companies with familiar logos are snatching the best, and even for “not-the-A-class” talent, there is fierce competition amongst smaller companies. The pipeline of projects and requests from the business is overwhelming and frequently are scoped and estimated at at decades worth of work to achieve. And to top it all off, normal maintenance, dealing with legacy  systems, apps sustenance, and an increasing amount of technical debt are seldom to never the top priority for business stakeholders. These are some of the things I have experienced in my career.

But all is not lost.  For me, personally, I have found that there is a  path to synergy between business and technology. I know this gap can be closed.  The walls can be torn down. And this is exactly the reason for my decision to change the direction of my career. Business problems cannot be solved by technology only, but technology can and should play a significant role in the overall solution. My plan is to focus on solving business  problems with the help of technology, whether it is the optimization of business processes, staffing or talent issues, innovation, modernization, digital disruption, digital transformation, go to market acceleration or simply closing the gap on a lack of technology knowledge. We are fortunate to have built a team of extremely talented people helping our clients achieve synergy.