The Playbook
Korio is a group of professionals who came together to help companies re-platform and become agile and fast. We prefer to work with established companies in the mid-market who might be struggling with the transformation to digital. Collectively, we have gone through dozens of transformations. We have witnessed successes and failures.
Based on what we have learned, we have become quite opinionated on what works and what doesn't. This short post is part of a larger Playbook that we have assembled based on what we have learned.
For details on each on our approach to organization and team structure, explore the links below.
As we learn more from our clients and if we think that the learning is: A) actionable, B) validated and C) doesn't state the obvious, then we will add it to our Playbook.
Remember, everything we propose can be done incrementally and with very little lead-time. If you want to adopt the plays in a more gradual manner, go ahead but consider setting each up as an experiment: have a hypothesis, measure the impact and act on what you learn.
The Play: If you think you might struggle to be Agile and incremental, consider creating a "startup" inside your mature business.
- Ignoring the signs that your enterprise is not equipped to transform is a common challenge. If you start down the path towards a conventional transformation and notice that you can't behave, at the critical moments like a digital-first startup would, consider cutting over to the internal startup.
- If you see the signs of a culture, organization structure or technical approach that will hamper you ability to introduce a differentiating digital platform, consider carving out a small team that can get the job done.
- Add your best people from across the organization to the team - but they must be willing and eager. Pick people who are comfortable with uncertainty but balance that with a need for diversity of approach.
- Seed the team with new hires extracted from digital-first competitors or similar industries that have mastered digital channels. This may be up to half of your team or more.
- Think carefully about the internal startup's relationship with the parent company - in the short, intermediate and long term. If the startup is to be re-integrated into the legacy business so that the incumbents can participate in the "re-invention", tread carefully. We want to make sure that the new and dominant culture is that of the startup, but where the startup demonstrates respect for the business that incubated them.
Why Bother
- Mature companies setting out on a transformation have a major hill to climb. Structurally, their business may have evolved to a form that reacts negatively to innovation in a subtle but systemic way. Culturally and from a skills standpoint, you may have very capable operators of your going-concern, but these aren't always the same people that can drive or even participate in a transformation.
What To Avoid
- Re-integration challenges: This is by far your biggest risk with this approach. Essentially, there is a high risk that your parent/legacy business will "reject" your incubated startup when it comes time for integration. In most cases the businesses are kept seperate on the surface, but they attempt to gain "economies" associated with shared resources at some level. This can cause an unintentional, creeping dysfunction. Assess the cultures and processes/practices of each entity. If your gut says they are incompatible, keep them separate.
The Fallback
If you feel your culture will support innovation, then go for it. Internal startups are hard to pull off successfully in our experience. In either case, be aware that the work of re-platforming and reinventing yourself as a digital heavyweight requires many of your critical resources to be partially or fully seconded.