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Co-creating Digital Transformation (Adobe)

CEB RESEARCH Published 22 May 2018 - ID G00700625 - 16 min read

CEB CIO Research Team

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Supporting Initiative is CIO Excellence in I&T Operating Model Design and Strategy Execution

Adobe’s CIO moves decision making and planning deeper into the organization to tap into the
collective wisdom of employees and accelerate digital transformation. The CIO uses design
events to co-create change decisions and implementation planning at scale.

Company Name: Adobe Systems Incorporated

Industry: Software

Headquarters Location: San Jose, California

2017 Revenue: US$ 7.3 Billion

Head Count: 18,000

Overview
Most organizations take a top-down approach to managing change. This ignores that work today
is multidirectional, reporting lines are more complex, and leaders are too far removed from how
work gets done. Adobe’s CIO and her leadership team adapt to this work environment by
becoming decision facilitators rather than just decision makers. They engage employees as active
participants in making change decisions and shift ownership for implementation planning to
employees.

Solution Highlights
Driving organizational change in the digital era requires a new change management approach:

■ Adobe invites employees with diverse backgrounds, experiences and expertise to use design-
thinking principles for co-creating change decisions at scale.

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■ Organizations that co-create change increase the probability of change success by as much as
24%; implementation time decreases by as much as one-third.
■ Instead of making change decisions alone, leaders need to engage the workforce as active
participants in making and shaping changes.

Challenge
Work has become more complex, interconnected and less predictable. As a result, decision
making can become slower and less decisive, and executing decisions is harder as teams across
the enterprise seek greater autonomy. Digitalization further amplifies the need for decision makers
to seek out diverse perspectives and foster cross-cutting collaborations. Yet many incumbent
organizations struggle to change their decision-making models. Whereas conventional top-down
approaches are too restrictive, systems for complete self-management such as holacracy are
impractical.

Business Context
Adobe IT has been transforming its IT operating model to support a digital business. The
transformation is centered on four IT operating model changes.

■ First, structuring IT product lines to operate like a cloud provider and deliver with greater speed
and flexibility
■ Second, building architecture capabilities to co-create digital strategy and support cloud-like
delivery
■ Third, clarifying management models for IT product lines, technical platforms, and processes

■ Fourth, defining new modes of engagement to improve IT-business collaboration

Solution: Design Events as a Mechanism for Co-creating Change

Recognizing the magnitude of the operating model changes she wanted to introduce, Adobe’s CIO
used design events to co-create these changes with a broad base of employees. The design
events are an accelerated approach to co-creating change decisions and implementation planning
through a repeatable decision-making framework. The design events use physical collaboration
spaces that can be reconfigured depending on the stage of each event to bring multidisciplinary
teams together (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Physical Design Environment

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Illustration of design-event space

Design events help IT leaders and employees solve IT and other business challenges and are
characterized by the following features:

1. Co-located: Multidisciplinary teams are brought together for immersive events.

2. Time-boxed: Events last from one to three days to foster creative thinking and efficiency.

3. Design thinking: A customer-centric approach is used to solve business problems.

4. Modular: Larger problems (epics) are broken into smaller problems (stories) with dedicated
teams and sprints to increase output through parallel processing.

5. Nimble: Teams of six to eight participants are aggregated only for larger problems.

6. Decision by design: Design cycles are iterated to ensure the best ideas surface to the top.

Adobe uses design events for a wide range of decisions (see Figure 2). This includes strategic
decisions that set direction and affect a broad population of employees, such as managing an
M&A or defining the future IT operating model. Design events also co-create implementation plans

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for changes defined in previous design events (for example, implementing the four IT operating
model changes defined in an earlier design event). Similarly, the output of a design event can be
localized in geography-specific events to help local teams understand what the changes mean for
them.

Figure 2: Types of Change Decisions That Can Be Co-created in a Design Event

Illustration of co-created change decisions

Adobe’s design events follow five principles to co-create change and implementation planning at
scale:

Redefine the Role of Leaders in Change

Position leaders as change facilitators, not just decision makers, and hold them accountable for
creating the conditions for co-created change to succeed.

Most organizations manage change from the top down. Leaders often believe that they include
employees when they make decisions, but this involvement is typically limited to collecting
feedback after a decision has been made. The best-known alternatives to this approach are
radically transparent ways of working that enable everyone in the organization to participate in the
process of shaping and making decisions (bottom up).

Both decision-making models show significant drawbacks (see Figure 3). When leaders see
decision making as their prerogative (top down), they risk ignoring critical interdependencies and
operational impacts. The plans typically require revisions and multiple authorizations that delay
implementation. Yet, if everyone has a say in decisions (bottom up), the decisions are slowed
down and often settle for compromise, not for what is best for the organization. Consensus-driven
decision making also creates confusion around accountability and responsibility.

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Figure 3: The New Role of Leaders in Making and Shaping Change Decisions

Three models of decision making

Adobe’s design events offer a repeatable and outcome-focused decision-making process that co-
creates change by pushing decision making deeper into the organization. The first step is to
encourage a mindset shift in leaders who should start looking at their role as change facilitators,
not just decision makers.

Adobe holds leaders accountable for facilitating open decision making and for committing time
and resources to provide oversight of the co-created changes and implementation plans. As
Cynthia Stoddard, Adobe’s CIO, explained: “Leadership doesn’t have a title and you certainly don’t
need to be a VP or a CIO to demonstrate it. Leadership and innovation can be exercised at all
levels, based on the merit of ideas.”

Ensure that All Affected Employee Groups Weigh In

Actively involve representatives from all employee segments whose workflows, responsibilities
and/or schedules could be affected by the change.

Adobe’s design events include a carefully curated set of employees. The design event owner is
typically the most accountable person for the success of the change that the event supports. He
or she works with a small team of design-event designers to shortlist participants. They select
leaders and employees affected by the change — that is, their jobs, responsibilities, autonomy or
work schedule. Other criteria for selecting employees include their ability to influence the success
of the change (early and late adopters) and their ability to bring expertise to the discussion or a
different perspective to the challenge.

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After drawing up a shortlist, the design event leaders narrow the list so each design event
represents conflicting needs and priorities, different seniority levels and the skill sets required to
effectively solve the challenge. The right number of people to include depends on the complexity
of the challenge. A design event that tackles a complex challenge may consist of smaller teams,
each with six to eight employees.

Focus on Customer Impact

Reframe the change as a customer-centric challenge to help employees find common ground.

Involving employees from different backgrounds and with different seniority levels in the decision-
making process requires an effort to help them establish common ground upfront. Adobe follows
a simple process to transition from a broad problem statement to an actionable and customer-
centric challenge that brings clarity and focus to the design event (see Figure 4). Spending enough
time upfront on the problem statement goes a long way in facilitating the design event later on as
it moves the ideation process in the right direction.

Figure 4: An Actionable and Customer-Centric Design Event Challenge

Development of a customer-centric problem statement

An effective design event challenge must be an actionable problem statement that identifies the
internal or external customer (who), specifies the customer need (what), and clarifies the business
outcomes the customer wants to achieve (why). A good definition of the challenge is broad

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enough to enable creative thinking and narrow enough to keep the challenge manageable.
Focusing on the customer instead of technologies or internal processes ensures event
participants all have the same understanding of the problem.

Consider Multiple Alternative Solutions

To move the team beyond obvious solutions, explore idealistic future states unconstrained by time
and resources.

A design event that tackles a complex challenge such as Adobe’s IT operating model
transformation will typically consist of smaller teams that focus on different aspects of the
challenge. In the example of the IT operating model transformation, the teams were aligned with
one of the four operating model changes outlined earlier (see Business Context).

Each team was given a future-state scenario to help them reflect on what the future could look like
if it was not constrained by time and resources (see Figure 5). Each scenario started with a
deliberately idealistic future state to help the team break through conventional wisdom on real and
perceived barriers that would stall the conversation. Adobe uses probing questions (for example,
questions on how the company achieved this future state) to make the future state feel real and
help employees set aside existing assumptions.

Figure 5: Articulation of an Idealistic Future State to Broaden Employee Thinking

Sample future-state scenario

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Envisioning alternative futures that are unconstrained by time and resources helps the teams
move beyond the assumption that the company’s existing ways of working and doing business are
inevitable. This also instills a sense of possibility and optimism in the team. Instead of focusing
on barriers, the future-state scenarios lead to inputs on the transformation roadmap to overcome
those barriers.

Explore the Art of the Possible

Introduce constraints and rapidly iterate on ideas, creating room for practical ideas to develop.

Each design event runs as a sequence of sprints to help the teams move from an idealistic future
state to a realistic target state (see Figure 6). The different stages in the design event help the
teams narrow down to realistic solutions through six activities that run across the entire event:

Figure 6: How Design Events Help Move From an Idealistic to Realistic Target State

Illustration of sprint sequencing

1. Introducing Parameters: Target-state scenarios bring in constraints (e.g., technical or

budgetary).

2. Parallel Processing: Work is broken into pieces to allow teams to develop solutions
concurrently.

3. Scouting: Participants visit other teams to gather input, challenge, provide feedback and spot
dependencies.

4. Shifting and Sharing: Some participants move between teams to facilitate cross-pollination.

5. Iterating on Ideas: Teams use input from other teams to refine their recommendations and
spark new ideas.

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6. Reporting Out: Breakout teams share their findings to bring everyone up to speed during the
event.

Through breakouts and chat rooms the teams can share their findings with other teams and
continuously iterate on their ideas (see Figure 1). The sequence of scouting, shifting and sharing,
and then reporting to the other teams continues as the participants move through different stages
of the design event: from exploring future-state scenarios, through co-creating a realistic target
state, to co-creating the roadmap to get there.

Results
By co-creating change decisions, Adobe has seen a significant increase in change success and
employee engagement. As Vinod Vishwan, head of business planning and operations at Adobe IT,
explained, “Employees are truly excited about taking part in our design events because we
position them as an opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary team that co-creates our future, not
just change.”

Among other deliverables, the outcome of the IT operating model design event included a co-
created roadmap for the transformation with milestones and interdependencies, a co-created
governance model for the transformation — including KPIs and defined ownership for each of the
IT operating model changes — and a co-created approach to change management and
engagement.

Recommendations
To help employees with different backgrounds and expertise co-create change, follow Adobe’s five
principles:

1. Redefine the role of leaders in change. Leaders should be change facilitators, not just decision
makers; hold them accountable for creating the conditions for co-created change to succeed.

2. Ensure that all affected employee groups weigh in. Actively involve representatives from all
employee segments whose workflows, responsibilities and/or schedules could be affected by
the change.

3. Focus on customer impact. Reframe the change as a customer-centric challenge to help

employees focus on a shared outcome.

4. Consider multiple solutions (initially) without constraints. Explore idealistic future states
unconstrained by time and resources to move the team beyond obvious solutions.

5. Explore the art of the possible. Introduce constraints and rapidly iterate on ideas, creating room
for practical ideas to develop.

Implementation Tools
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The presentation version (content/cio/us/en/member/research/presentation/18/co-creating-
digital-transformation-adobe-presentation-slides.html?sso=gartner) of this study contains a
detailed implementation guide that shows the structure and agenda of Adobe’s IT operating model
design event, the roles of leaders in enabling design events, a design event facilitator guide, and
preparation guidance.

Q&A With Member

We spoke with Vinod Vishwan, Adobe IT’s head of business planning and operations, on how their
IT team  uses design events to co-create digital transformation:

1. Are there changes that are out of scope for the design events?
No, I don’t think so. We have used design events to redefine our IT identity and values, manage
M&A systems integration as well as solution design. It’s all change management and the results
will be better if you involve all layers of the organization upfront. For more confidential change
decisions you can also do an NDA with the event participants if and when required.

2. Could you elaborate on the different tracks of the IT operating model design event?
Our IT operating model transformation is centered on four pivots so the design event was
divided into four teams, each team aligned with one of the pivots. The first one was to orient IT
for cloud-like delivery, operate like a cloud provider to deliver with speed and flexibility. The
second team focused on culture: who is the service owner, who is the platform owner, how do
we interact? The third team focused on building out our architecture capabilities to support
cloud-like delivery. And the fourth change was to build an adaptive engagement model. We also
looked at the talent implications of these changes. The four teams worked on each of these
tracks and were able to cross-pollinate ideas. Because the participants moved between teams
throughout the design event, everyone was able to work on all the topics.

3. How do you prepare for a design event?

We always have to plan around the type of change we’re putting in place and who should be
involved in co-creating it. We’re a global organization so we try to involve as many people as
possible from different geographies. It’s very important to define the outcomes (both tangible
and intangible) that you’re looking for upfront and think about the inputs and expertise the team
will need to make the right decisions.

4. How long do you keep a design event together?

It depends. A design events is typically confined to a two-day workshop but we also organized
roadshows after the IT operating model design event. These were local design events that
enabled us to get feedback while we were making the change and understand how the change
affected remote employees. These feedback loops enable us to make additional changes.

5. How do you ensure that leaders commit to the changes that are co-created in a design event?
The teams agreed to run the changes agreed on in the IT operating model design event as a
program. We have a project plan for every change activity and leaders commit time and

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resources to oversee the changes. This shows employees that the leadership team has signed
up for it. Everyone in the department now has an IT operating model goal. Design events also
create a great sense of camaraderie. We all signed a mission statement. It’s a very large
document on a board to communicate to the rest of the team that we’re committed to making
this change happen. The mission statement was framed and placed outside the CIO’s office as
a constant reminder about the change.

About This Research

To understand how leading organizations manage the changes that come with digital
transformation, we spoke with over 100 CIOs and other IT and business leaders around the world.
We also drew on interviews and research studies from our Corporate Leadership Council and
Communications Leadership Council. Collectively we surveyed over 12,500 employees, 300
organizations and 100 heads of functions to determine the most effective approaches to driving
successful change.

Recommended by the Authors

■ Read our research on Open Source Change: Driving Organizational Change in the Digital Era
(content/cio/us/en/member/research/white-paper/17/driving-organizational-change-in-the-
digital-era.html?sso=gartner)  to learn more on how leading organizations change their
approach to change management.
■ View our webinar, Open Source Change: Making Change Management Work 
(content/cio/us/en/member/events/replays/17/open-source-change-making-change-
management-work.html?sso=gartner) to learn how to involve employees in decisions about
change strategy.

Presentation Deck
Download presentation slides for this material
(content/cio/us/en/member/research/presentation/18/co-creating-digital-transformation-
adobe-presentation-slides.html?sso=gartner) .

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