A live enterprise is one that keeps changing with the changing environment. And
as organizations across the world seek ways to adapt, there is a realization
that it is more important than ever for them to consider new
approaches, practices and processes to move forward.
This is especially true at a time when the global environment has disrupted
operations in a big way.
Gleaning from their experiences and learnings Jeff Kavanaugh, Global Head of the
Infosys Knowledge Institute, and Rafee Tarafdar, Chief Technology Officer of the
Strategic Technology Group at Infosys, shared their insights in their book “The
Live Enterprise,” elaborating on how leaders and organizations need to be agile,
in order to consistently evolve, and become a live enterprise.
“Every company in the world needs to be a live enterprise.
And that requires a dramatic reinvention of its own digital infrastructure to
become live,” says Nandan M. Nilekani
Also sharing his thoughts, Nandan M. Nilekani, Co-founder of Infosys, says that
every company in the world needs to be a live enterprise.
“That requires a dramatic reinvention of its own digital infrastructure to become
live,” he says, adding that the principles of live enterprise – sentience, quick
stimuli, and being able to respond to new situations - are important elements of
a life enterprise.
As everything is becoming digital, changes that earlier used to take several
years have happened in a matter of weeks during the pandemic. As a result, says
Nilekani, that every organization has to become a digital enterprise.
“That is where the principles of live enterprise are, very strategic,” he says.
Kavanaugh too believes that successful companies are the ones that sense reason
and respond in an agile manner, and as a result, evolve quickly.
Tarafdar agrees.
“Successful companies sense reason and respond in a very
agile way. More importantly, they evolve quickly,” says Jeff Kavanaugh
He views that business can design for evolvability, rather than focusing on
feature functions, so that they create a platform that essentially enables them
to drive more innovations in future.
“Then the sentience essentially helps them respond to the changing business
stimuli, changing customer expectations, changing norms, like the one COVID-19
that we had to deal with,” he says.
Kavanaugh notes that the live enterprise model allows solid agile principles to
be practiced at scale, even in a large company, without sacrificing the
structure and scale needed to be successful.
Nilekani highlights that for Infosys to be able to help and advice its clients,
it has been important that the organization itself becomes agile.
“And so, we took on a major journey of reinventing every part of Infosys,” he
says talking about a range of efforts on the learning front, collaboration
platform, cloud approach, among other things.
“A lot of these routine decisions that doesn't require a
higher order thinking or human involvement are done autonomously, so that humans
can focus on more important tasks and activities,” says Rafee Tarafdar.
“Everything has been reimagined and reinvented over the last three years, and
this reinvention of Infosys has given us the confidence that we now know what to
talk to our clients about,” he says.
Tarafdar suggests that it is important for organizations that autonomous
decisions become a part of routine decision making where higher order thinking
or human involvement is not required, so that humans can focus on more important
tasks and activities.
“Anyone can adapt live enterprise principles,” says Kavanaugh, adding that it’s
important to stay connected, observe, be informed, and finally make decisions
based on the observations.
“And do it boldly,” he emphasizes.
These principles of Live Enterprise, concludes Nilekani, apply to every company
in the world.