At Intelbyte, providing digital solution services to businesses of varying sizes has given us a front-row seat to observe how leadership makes a difference in a company’s ability to maximize the opportunities provided by the Microsoft Power platform. Here are a few things we have seen that differentiate high-performing companies in this area from those that struggle.

CEO vs The Citizen Developer Led Innovation

Innovation in companies can be driven top-down, bottom-up or in a hybrid manner. For the top-down companies, innovation moves in step with what the leaders decide. Bottom-up companies are generally more flexible but require well-defined processes to manage and harness the innovation process. Citizen developers require an enabling environment to push the boundaries of innovation to create solutions. The companies that maximize the Microsoft Power Platform encourage bottom-up innovation and allow their employees to create digital solutions to solve emerging business issues.

Empowering Citizen Developers While Maintaining Governance

Effective leaders strike a balance between control and freedom. Companies that maximize the Power Platform practice provide the required guardrails for safe and compliant solution development. Allowing citizen developers create solutions without controls to prevent data breaches and unauthorized access issues that arise as these solutions gain widespread adoption within the business is not ideal for a company’s power platform practice. The best companies we implement the required governance via Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) policies.

Strategic Partnerships with Microsoft

Successful companies have a working knowledge of the products, services, programs and licenses available from Microsoft to support their businesses. This is very important as it allows them select the best combination of products and services required to meet their business needs in a cost-effective manner. Microsoft solutions require the investment of resources, so it is pertinent for businesses to optimize their selection of Microsoft Product offerings vs their business needs.

Fostering a Maker Mindset

Effective leaders encourage employees to see themselves as problem solvers, not just app builders. This is a prerequisite for having a thriving community of makers. Leaders and organizations must encourage and train their employees to have a solution mindset. When employees see challenges as an opportunity to create more value, it ignites a quality of ideation that creates high-value digital solutions that citizen developers can rapidly develop and deploy.

Developing an Internal Power Platform Community

The proverbial phrase of “strength in numbers” holds true here. Organizations that succeed provide digital spaces and incentives for communities of like-minded people to come together to share ideas. This is a critical area where businesses can encourage organic Power Platform capacity development via knowledge transfer. Having a thriving community where knowledge is shared and problems are discussed is a critical success feature in companies that make the most of their Power Platform practice.

The best-in-class organizations we observed take this a step further by establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE). The Microsoft CoE is a dedicated team, framework, or hub within an organization that focuses on adopting, optimizing, and governing Microsoft technologies to drive business innovation and efficiency.

Training & Upskilling Strategies

Prioritizing the training of employees is a key requirement for developing a high-capacity workforce. Things evolved rapidly with the Microsoft Power Platform ecosystem. In addition, most people pick up these competencies via self-training. This reduces barriers to entry but also results in individuals who may not have a balanced set of skills required to reliably deliver solutions. Here is where a business’ decision to take a deliberate step to train and upskill its staff becomes priceless. This investment is simple and readily accessible as there are many open source trainings and easily accessible literature to help staff level up on their skills.

Leaders must prioritize Strong Governance Models

A key issue we have observed is a situation where business leaders see the Power Platform governance framework as a nice-to-have or an optional item. This hardly ends well as it ends up creating a significant technical debt which continues to compound over time until becomes a disturbing situation within the business. We cannot over emphasize the need for a functional Governance Frame. Effective leaders must set the tone across the entire business by ensuring that the framework gets the priority it deserves. We cover the details of getting this write in a separate article titled Building a Sustainable Power Platform Strategy.

Leveraging Microsoft’s Power Platform Roadmap

Most businesses have internal plans and roadmaps. However, companies that get the most out of their Power Platform practice maximize the features and capabilities available with the Power Platform. The leaders in these businesses and the respective technical managers who coordinate innovation are familiar with the details of the Microsoft Power Platforms road map (or release plans). These businesses stay ahead by planning and aligning with future updates to the Power Platform and rapidly evolving AI-driven capabilities.

The Most Critical Differentiator

While we have offered multiple areas for leaders to ensure their teams are enabled to develop, the most critical differentiator we have seen in businesses that maximize the use of the Microsoft Power Platform is the ability of their leaders to foster an innovative and solution creation mindset across the entire business. These leaders value their people and position them as the core engine for business improvement and growth, and the results they generate prove that this approach is effective.

In John Maxwell’s words, everything rises and falls on leadership. In technical spaces, it is easy to get sucked into the tools and techniques of the trade. We must never forget that leadership is an indispensable level to unlocking business value in this space. To find out more how we can help your business grow via digital transformation, visit us at www.intelbyte.ca to get started.