What do we mean by ‘exemplar’ projects in (Digital) Transformation?
Exemplars are used in digital and organisational transformation to model new ways of working in an organisation’s real work environment.
Exemplars are used to
- show a possibly sceptical organisation that new ways of working and organising can deliver value — more efficiently and effectively;
- to uncover organisational barriers to these new ways of working;
- and to build internal capability in those new ways of working;
Exemplar teams typically blend existing staff with external experts, such as coaches or consultants, who provide on-the-job learning and shadowing opportunities. For example, a staff member transitioning into user research might shadow an experienced consultant researcher while contributing to the exemplar team’s work.
Exemplars should be strategically important, longer-lived work where value can be delivered incrementally. This ensures the team’s effort has visible impact, secures stakeholders interest throughout, and allows time to build meaningful knowledge of the domain.
Why have exemplars?
- Deliver valuable work using new ways of working: Demonstrate that new approaches lead to valuable, real-world outcomes and that the organisation itself can deliver.
- Identify barriers and enablers: Surface how current organisational policies — optimized for existing ways of working — may inhibit new practices.
- Support Enabling Teams: Provide evidence to help HR, Finance and others adapt their processes to better meet the needs of teams using new ways of working. People in Enabling teams will likely be unfamiliar with the new ways of working used by the exemplar teams and not understand why the exemplar team can’t follow existing processes as other teams in the organization do.
- Build capability and advocacy: Develop internal skills and champions for the new approach.
- Inform future teams: Use lessons learned to support and scale subsequent exemplar teams.
Common Traps
- Populating your exemplar with star performers only: — the folks leading transformation work need to show that it doesn’t take superstars to use the new working methods — they must be within reach of everyone
- Otherwise giving your exemplar teams special treatment: again, sceptics could argue that it is the special treatment that is making the exemplar team successful, not the new ways of working. If you’re supporting an exemplar you do need to realise though that the existing organisational culture, mindsets, processes and practices may not work for enable your exemplar teams. Listen out for this and support your Enabling Team colleagues to adapt their processes to better support the exemplars.
- Setting up your exemplar in a separate bubble: Unless you set up a new organisation, with new people and new processes you cannot completely separate your exemplars from the existing working environment — but you can set them up so that they are working almost independently from the rest of the organisation, staffed largely by suppliers familiar with the new ways of working. This is an extreme example of special treatment. However, depending on how much of a bubble you have created, its impact as an exemplar to the rest of the organisation will be significantly diminished. But, sometimes a bubble is what is needed (*). If your exemplar absolutely must deliver quickly and you are happy to sacrifice much of its power as an exemplar, then by all means build that bubble.
If the set up for an exemplar is easily repeatable by other teams in your organisation — without superstars, special treatment or a bubble then it will be a truer exemplar of what is possible through the organisation.
A final word
Exemplar teams do need space and support to succeed. Initial delivery may be slower as they encounter barriers, and team members must be resilient — friction can arise between teams working in news ways and an organisation that is optimized for the current ways of working. With senior backing though, exemplars can act as both a proving ground and a catalyst for wider organisational change.
(*) I’ll write more about bubbles another day.
