Which change model fits an OT/IT convergence? Rondeau, Besson and Rowe, and what leadership has to do

A digital transformation is not the purchase of new technology. It is a change of culture, organisation, strategy and leadership that happens to involve technology. Frimousse and Peretti put it this way: an organisation’s capacity to transform depends on the capacity of its people and teams to change their frames of reference. On a plant, that means the automation engineer who has run the same SCADA for fifteen years and the IT architect who has never set foot in a clean room both have to see the problem differently.

This is part 6 of 9 of the “OT/IT convergence” series, and the first of two on the human side; it continues with part 7, putting people at the centre.

A caveat first, from Cigref: there is no single organisational model or roadmap for convergence. Each company has to find its own. Two academic models help find it faster, though, and they suit different situations.

Rondeau (2002): change as incremental reorganisation

Rondeau’s model is not after radical change. It steers an organisation towards incremental transformation and avoids the kind of upheaval that tends to backfire. The business model adapts step by step, and the organisation becomes more agile instead of being shocked into a new shape.

It works along four axes, which keep their French names in the literature.

Réaménagement (restructuring) starts from the observation that the current business model no longer works. It aims to integrate activities better through technology and to share strategic information more widely. The leader has to turn an abstract idea of a new business model into things people actually do on Monday morning, and that gap between vision and action is where most restructuring dies.

Renouvellement (renewal) needs a change of culture first. It assumes people are ready to work differently, and it moves forward through dialogue and support, with real interest in what people do day to day. Small daily changes add up to a large one.

Réalignement (realignment) is about using resources better, which needs an effective control system. That system ends up relying mostly on informal regulation. Decisions become a responsibility shared between managers and staff, and incentives and controls line everyone up behind the company’s objectives. Poincelot and Wegmann describe what this can look like: clan controls or rituals, that is, control through company culture, or through the autonomy, responsibility and involvement of a working group.

Redéploiement (redeployment) adjusts the offer to the need, mostly by trial and error. Dosi, Teece and Winter define learning as the process by which repetition and experimentation let tasks be done better and faster, and new opportunities be spotted.

Rondeau also stresses the role of networks. Assens makes the point directly: a network can loosen an organisation that is too rigid, with a frozen org chart and too many layers of management, by spreading responsibilities more flexibly along the relationships that already link people informally.

That observation fits OT/IT convergence unusually well. On most sites, the informal network of people who actually get things done across the IT/OT boundary exists long before any org chart admits it: the network engineer who knows which PLC sits behind which switch, the automation technician who quietly fixes the historian.

Besson and Rowe: change as strategic transformation

Besson and Rowe look at transformation from the strategic side, with top management starting the change. Their model reads transformation along four dimensions: the initiative, the ecology, the process and the results. Resistance to change sits at its centre, together with the need to overcome organisational inertia so that the company fits its environment again.

Several ideas come out of it.

Actors and technology shape each other. Socio-technical systems are complex, and people tend to cling to familiar systems even when they are obsolete. Anyone who has tried to retire a spreadsheet that three departments depend on knows this.

Inertia is the main obstacle. Established routines resist change even when the change is needed for survival and growth.

Top management starts it; everyone has to carry it. The transformation is usually launched by the executive team or the founder, the real “actor and leader” of the project, but it only succeeds with buy-in at every level.

Implementation takes time. New technology needs time and effort before it fits what users actually need, and people resist, preferring what they know.

Agility is not optional when the environment keeps moving: the company has to be organised to adapt as its ecosystem changes.

Leadership

How leaders adapt is decisive. Understanding the digital tools is not enough. An effective leader in this setting sees how they fit into the processes, the culture and the daily work of the people who will use them.

Digital transformation is not an end in itself. It is a way to become more agile, to innovate, and to answer changing needs more precisely. So leaders have to spot what is coming and turn it into opportunities, and they have to be able to rally their teams around a shared direction. A plant manager who can explain to a shift team why the new MES matters to them, in their words, is worth more than a polished strategy deck.

It also takes an open mind and a willingness to experiment and learn. Transformation carries risk and uncertainty, and a flexible approach, adjusted as results and feedback come in, is what gets past the obstacles.

The nine things IT and OT managers have to do together

Convergence changes how these teams are organised and managed. They share objectives but come from different professional backgrounds, with different priorities, constraints and needs. Nine challenges fall to the managers of both sides:

1. Bring the teams together and get past the cultural and operational differences.
2. Build shared understanding: exchange know-how until each side understands the other’s constraints.
3. Pool resources where it makes sense, so tools and skills are used more efficiently.
4. Encourage skills transfer in both directions.
5. Create a common culture that includes both perspectives.
6. Attract and keep people: an integrated IT/OT approach is attractive to the people you want.
7. Develop common processes, starting with security incident management.
8. Use shared technologies and tools that suit both domains.
9. Value hybrid profiles: people who know both IT and OT and act as translators.

Point 9 deserves more space. Hybrid profiles are scarce, and they are usually found too late. Very often they are already on site, doing translation work informally and without recognition: the controls engineer who also runs the plant’s firewall, the IT technician who learned to read a P&ID. Finding them costs less than recruiting them.

Conclusion

Moving beyond traditional structures towards more agile organisations is decisive for industrial digital transformation. It needs teams to work together far more closely, which is another way of saying that the human factor decides the outcome.

Rondeau’s model helps people adapt to new technology and processes through continuous, gradual change, which keeps resistance down. Besson and Rowe’s model is a tool for leaders: set a clear strategic direction, understand how technology serves the business objectives, and use it deliberately to overcome inertia.

Put together, one model manages people through the change and the other manages the change through the organisation. Neither works alone.

Next: the human factor itself, and why a technology programme has a person at its centre.

Model references: Patrick Varenne, La transformation digitale des entreprises : effectuation et Business Model Digital Dynamique, 2020. Cigref, Convergence IT-OT, December 2019.