The Pressure Cooker
Every CIO knows the feeling. The impossible demands pile up like afternoon meetings: Cut costs. Deliver faster. Disrupt the market (but don't disrupt our systems). Move to the cloud. Be more agile. Innovate constantly. Oh, and do it all with less budget than last year.
Sound familiar?
I lived this reality, and what I learned about transformation might surprise you. Our story begins in the midst of a business turnaround, where every day felt like playing roulette with the company's future.
The Survival Years
Our company was bleeding money. Every year brought new losses, and the stakes couldn't have been higher – either stop the hemorrhaging or watch the patient flatline. In these survival moments, you learn to make bold bets while applying digital band-aids everywhere else. The mandate was clear: focus on growth and customers; everything else gets duct tape and prayers.
Our IT department had become the organizational punching bag. Projects moved at a glacial pace, features were regularly descoped, and business expectations lived in a perpetual state of disappointment. Legacy systems had us in a chokehold, making even the smallest changes feel like moving mountains.
The Turning Point
Then something remarkable happened – we turned a profit. Suddenly, the conversation shifted from survival to transformation. We needed to do more than just stay alive; we needed to thrive. This was when we decided to pilot a low-code development platform.
What happened next taught us more about organizational transformation than any consulting engagement ever could.
