In mid-April 2023, Sudan was plunged into civil war. The para-military group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was formed during the war in Darfur, outside the control of the national army for “special operations”. Because they weren’t under the leadership of the army, normal war protocol was not followed, and large scale atrocities were committed, more than would be expected under normal war conditions. Over the years, the RSF has grown in power within the country, and this reached its inevitable climax in a clash between the leader of RSF Mohamed Hamdan, and the army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Coincidentally, the Russian Wagner Group has a similar story. A private paramilitary group was formed outside the structures of the normal army, operated outside the confines of procedure which has been defined over decades of experience, and finally a power struggle ensued and the group staged a mutiny on 24 June 2023, by capturing the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don with a view to capture Moscow and depose of the military leadership.
Within corporate digital transformations over the past 15 years or so, conventional consultant wisdom has proposed the above strategy: set up an elite team digital practitioners who will advance “special strategic projects”, and will (presumably) over time be incorporated into the main structures of the organisation for the long term. A consultancy brings in their toolbox and sets up this team within the organisation, which has unprecedented access to the executive leadership of the organisation compared to the regular IT teams. Approvals are done in a matter of minutes compared to the multiple-week-long-dances of meeting postponements and cancellations. And naturally, because of this “streamlined” procedure, results are delivered much faster.
Yet, over time resentment is built up in the existing structures. Where interaction is supposed to happen between the existing structures and the new special projects team, it’s often met with hostility and frustration. The new project team demands resources outside of the existing IT structures, and these are granted, further building a wedge between the two.
At the end of the consultancy engagement, this team is then meant to be incorporated into the main organisation structures, and this proves to be difficult. Members of the new team don’t want to be constrained by the “old way of working”. Members of the old team don’t want to work with these arrogant upstarts who haven’t earned their stripes. Luckily, IT special projects don’t have such a high degree of political power in the organisation that they can derail it from its long term strategic path.
What happens in the end is that members of the new special projects team end up leaving. Now the existing structures have to maintain software which they weren’t a part of forming and have no incentive to maintain. Knowledge and practice transfer haven’t happened because of the latent animosity between the teams. And the organisation has just spent a fortune on the project with limited results.
An alternative, possibly better way to approach such an endeavour of digital transformation is to appoint strong resilient leaders within the organisation to guide its existing structures to the intended outcome. This proves to be much slower over the short term, as changing mindsets and practice takes time. Yet, over the medium to longer term it has a greater chance of success, as everyone will be taken on the journey together, avoiding unnecessary internal coups that derail the organisation.
Photo by Duncan Kidd on Unsplash
Patrick Kayongo 