VIDEO | City of Virginia Beach CDO: Leaders Must Be Ready To Change

(US and Canada) Bojan Duric, Chief Data Officer, City of Virginia Beach, speaks with Denise Collison, SVP President Public Sector Sales, SHI International, in a video interview about the components to drive organizational change, barriers to that change, the human-centered approach, and the role of leaders in change management.

Communication is the key to change, and change is inevitable, says Duric. Acknowledging people’s reactions to change is equally important, he adds. Duric applies the impact-influence matrix to determine the organizational change process. Through this, he influences a group of people who can create an impact by finding sponsors to aid the organizational change.

Duric further states that no one wants to change until it delivers value. He notes that instead of changing the culture, leveraging solid cultural traits yields better transformation, and the culture evolves. The focus should be on cultural evolution, not revolution, he emphasizes. Duric also considers semantics to be a potential barrier to organizational change. He points out that the language used to approach a change initiative is critical to the evolution.

Continuing, Duric states that the human-centered approach embraces technologies, processes, and people. He believes that the best technologies and processes only matter if there are people to work on them.

Next, Duric notes that to promote organizational change, leaders must:

• Be ready to change themselves, to relearn and unlearn as and when needed.
• Prepare for the transformation.
• Reject a change if it does not deliver value.
• Persevere and catalyze the transformation.

In conclusion, he urges leaders to understand that their vision may not always be in sync with the organization. Duric advises leaders to learn if the doers are ready for the change and show what is in it for them as change drivers.

CDO Magazine thanks Bojan Duric for sharing his insights on change management with our global community.

See more from Bojan Duric

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