Don’t think about change, do it!

After a warm welcome by Ronald Verbeek, charmain Marcel Krom took the stage to interact with the audience (with some help from Buzzmaster). One of the first insights this produced was that for at least 60% of the participants the changing world and the changing organization is top op mind!

After this, the authors of ‘CIO 3.0’, Antoon van Luxemburg en Karin Zwiggelaar, gave an overview of the development in the CIO working area, from automation, through informatization, to innovating and transformation. Antoon and Karin advised to speed up the learning curve by experimenting on a small scale, with faster delivery as an output. Antoon’s and Karin’s answer to a question from the audience “what will be 4.0 CIO?” was optimistic: “If IT will be the business, the new CIO will be the CEO”.

After this, Martijn Aslander, stand-up philosopher, gave his vision on the developments he is seeing in the world of technology and economy. He expects that within a few decades, the scarcity-based economy we all are familiar with, will come to an end. We need to focus on the society of abundance. Preparing your business by making plans for the futures doesn’t make sense anymore, because the speed of change is way too high. Just like Antoon and Karin, Martijn also advises the audience to work together smarter, by saying: “Start small and constantly focus on development”. Only this attitude will bring the needed speed.

Menno Lanting, expert on innovation, technology and leadership, inspired the participants about what disruption really means. In fact it means breaking down existing things... How do you keep your organization relevant and agile? What can you do to keep up with this development? The advice he gave was about thinking on a small scale, a flexible organization, participating in networks and a focus on exploration and learning, in stead of only exploitation. 

Just before the break, four members of our association (Heineken, PostNL, VIVAT verzekeringen and Royal Vopak) took the stage to pitch about their innovations. During the break, all participants had the opportunity to get to know more about these innovations during the innovation market. 

In the last part of the program, Sjoerd Blüm, CIO of Schiphol, explained the ambition of Schiphol to be 'worlds best digital airport’ in 2018. The IT strategy is formed as a business strategy and a CDO has the task to seduce the business to embrace digital transformation. The question about how to measure this ambition was clear to Sjoerd, it is a learning proces. Don't wait, just do it! 

With the extensive program of the day, the speakers have inspired the participants, and perhaps even seduced them, to take the first (or next) steps in change. The most important take-aways of the day are:

• Integrality between IT and business is essential to realise the transition to digitalization.
• Take into account the human factor in the willingness to change.
• Keep it small, experiment, make mistakes and learn from it.