BRM steps into Digital Business Leadership
Leadership & Capabilities
“LEF delivered a 5-day BRM Programme focused on dealing with organizational politics, effective C-level presentations, innovation/blue ocean strategy & recognizing personality types in others. The training was very well received & has already resulted in a major customer providing us with a bigger portion of their Cloud/AWS business. On a personal note, it has also helped me improve the working relationship with a key colleague to enable us to work far more effectively together. I highly recommend LEF, particularly to companies looking to introduce a BRM function within their business for the first time.”
Margherita Zaccaria, Head of BRM
& Strategic Programmes, Group Technology
Vodafone Group Services
Bridging the gap between IT and business is a perennial problem, but the need for IT personnel to provide leadership and engage as peers at the business table has never been greater. LEF believes that developing IT’s ability to engage with the line of business using their language holds the key.
Conventional efforts to create a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) as mediator between IT and the line of business can retain the divide and keep IT separate. A recurring theme is the imperative for IT to add greater business value at the top table, in order to better support their organization’s transformation agenda. Two tendencies have traditionally acted in concert to impede IT: separation from business colleagues, and a propensity to operate as a provider. Both reduce the perceived value of IT within the enterprise, and ultimately negatively impact business performance.
Unlock IT people’s value
Using experiential learning, this LEF programme enables employees to improve their ability to add greater business value, with increased emotional intelligence (EQ), improved communication effectiveness, and robust digital and technology expertise. We create a space for IT leaders to practice being proactive and courageous.
We use the 4P Framework to clarify the ways that IT can operate and add value to the business:
- Provider emphasizes reliability, efficiency & compliance, as IT seeks to meet the demands of business colleagues.
- Promoter actively proposes & builds awareness of emerging technological capabilities & how they could improve the firm’s business results.
- Partner acts like a consultant, focused on IT advice, implementation guidance & organizational change.
- Peer works alongside business colleagues to shape the future strategy of the firm & establish & sustain competitive advantage.
Rethink expectations of IT
Historically, organizations turned to BRM functions and individuals to fix the perceived inherent weakness of poor communication within IT. Some investments were successful, notably transport manufacturer Bombardier, whose BRM office exceeded its remit of mediating between internal departments, and instead was running bids into the German government.
In this instance, IT progressed from internal provider of traditional IT services to leading a business development initiative, designing, selling, and running operational BPO and ITO services in a new business model to a flagship customer. In doing so, IT established itself as a peer in the business with the credibility to sit at the top table.
Learn to partner
Participants are encouraged to rethink the traditional legacy remit of back-office efficiency; instead they should practice customer value influence with an outside-in perspective using a variety of tools. Evaluating what a successful peer looks like in the digital age is part of the learning journey; one organization has described how ‘IT plays at the front on sales bids’, while another says ‘IT now does fewer non-strategic projects’.
To further sharpen their business IQ, IT leaders should use LEF’s Business/IT Relationship Model to discover the value of becoming business partners. At the top, IT is aware of emerging technological trends and their social, organizational and political implications, future dynamics of their industry sector, and key developments in business thinking. By getting to this level, IT has earned its ‘licence to decide’.
Finesse emotional IQ
This programme boosts the emotional IQ of participants by using experiential learning to help relate better to every kind of colleague. Typically, this involves bolstering courage and confidence when dealing with people in order to enhance and activate technical and business IQ, and is achieved by:
- Demonstrating what good looks like using next & best practices, models, frameworks & metaphors.
- Training in soft skills, using techniques to provide insights into both self & social awareness
- Facilitating practice presentations to improve communications in both formal & informal discussions.
Delegates will learn how to discover their own personality type and how to recognize type in others. They’ll also learn to modify how they communicate with different types of individuals, and how this makes them more effective. It’s a thorough and intense experience that puts people outside their comfort zone to create change.
Programme agenda
This programme is comprised of modules that may be run in any combination and order. Every module makes extensive use of case studies, and can be tailored to include workshops specific to your organization. Modules are designed to engage delegates in discussion, requiring pre-work and active participation to maximize effectiveness.
|
Workshop
|
Duration
|
|
Creating value through strategy
|
2 days
|
|
Personality types, personal power & influence
|
2 days
|
|
The digital change
|
2 days
|
|
Additional modules available
|
|
Invest in IT becoming business partners & peers
Play a full part in digital transformation, generating value for the organization
Use experiential learning to improve emotional & business IQ
Complement the technical expertise of IT staff to help them be more effective
