Platform Leadership: Aligning your C-Suite to invest in digital platforms

How to gain senior leadership support and galvanize the organization behind the change initiative towards transforming to a platform business?

This article is part of the Digital Platforms hub

Gaining senior leadership buy-in to a platform initiative is one of the key factors that determines success or failure of the initiative. Senior leadership buy-in determines not just the prioritization of the initiative and the funding awarded to it, but also the extent to which other stakeholders across the organization liaise towards the success of the initiative. First, framing the platform initiative within the overall goals of the business and in service to furtherance of overall business strategy is essential to gaining senior leadership support. As the pace of technological change accelerates, senior leaders are bombarded with potentially revolutionary ideas and also aware of the many shiny objects that have failed after excessive investment. As the cost of capital increases, senior leaders tasked with allocating capital need to understand the return on investment (ROI) and the initiative’s impact on the topline.

As executives increasingly think about stakeholder capitalism, highlighting larger stakeholder benefits beyond business benefits may also play an important role, particularly for platform initiatives that create surplus value across the ecosystem. Conversely, threat framing – highlighting the threat of non-action – may spur some leaders into action but may also backfire if not done correctly. Finally, grounding or anchoring the change initiative in a familiar success story that has gained organization-wide buy-in in the past also helps gain senior leadership. At Nike, for instance, the success of the initial Nike+ projects laid the groundwork for a lot of subsequent organizational buy-in.

Another key to unlocking senior leadership backing is de-risking the business case by deploying initial pilots. Platform initiatives require investments across a longer horizon. Senior leaders often prefer tranched funding models where subsequent funding is dependent on the successful completion of the prior stage.

Getting senior leadership buy-in is not a one-time effort. Clearly articulating metrics, defining pilots, and gaining leadership buy-in to the approach and goals is key. As multiple innovation teams compete internally, the ones that lower the perception of risk by regularly meeting metrics they set out to achieve are the ones that consistently secure buy-in.