Vertical Leaping – It’s a term that’s probably most closely associated with basketball, a standard test for measuring the power output of a player, with elite athletes able to achieve vertical leap heights of 32”-36”, and in some cases even higher.
It’s an exercise for building both endurance and explosive power.
I think it’s an equally effective term for what IT organizations are facing today, in the “new normal” we’re all navigating through.
It’s actually a term we used at EMC, way back in the late ‘90s, as IT organizations who were following a standard horizontal growth curve for dealing with change, were suddenly confronted by the need to make a vertical leap instead, due to any combination of mergers, acquisitions, data center consolidations, the dotcom bubble and even Y2K planning. This created a pile-on effect, a need or an opportunity to accelerate months or even years of planning to vertically leap forward, quickly.
It occurred to me recently, here we go again. The contributing factors are different, but once again, the horizon for planning or responding to change is no longer horizontal. Digital disruption was already a vertical leap on top of normal IT ‘run the business’ challenges. This pandemic is now like a vertical leap on top of a vertical leap, an unprecedented situation that organizations must navigate through, quickly.
Here are some common themes that we’re seeing at Presidio:
This vertical leaping business is a tall order but if you think about the glass half-full version of this scenario, maybe today’s situation actually represents a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to accelerate positive change. Navigation is about making proactive, purposeful decisions to accelerate through vertical leaps. Which of these are top navigation points for you, or what might be missing?
In my next blog, we’ll take a look at each of these in more detail, starting with workforce transformation – because people are our most valuable asset. And if IT organizations could enable a modernized, distributed workforce experience, at scale, with secure access for all – imagine what that would mean for the productivity of your most valued asset?