‘Digital Transformation’ and its sibling ‘Digital Strategy’ have become clichés, unfortunately, as it distorts the management and leadership challenges involved.
However you choose to label the evolution from the analogue world of last century, to the digital ecosystems we now see evolving, it is a process, starting with the simplest things, and moving progressively along to the more complicated.
‘Digital’ is no longer a choice, it simply is!
How many of you have a ‘Telephone Strategy’? Nobody, it is simply a necessary tool, used better by some than others.
The failure of many ‘digital transformations’ I have seen has little to do with the digital tools, and a whole lot to do with the way people are managed, led, and the manner in which the enterprise leadership enables the evolution to digital to occur.
As with any process, in any transformation, including ‘digital’, there are some pretty simple to say, but hard to execute steps to be taken,
- Define the business outcomes you are seeking.
- Start with the simple, test, learn, and move progressively to the more complex, building as you go.
- Recognise and accommodate the wider impacts. In any digital evolution, your business model should evolve in sympathy. As you progressively digitise, the friction between the old and the new will become more intense, and potentially disruptive to operations if not managed well. This seems to frequently lead to some expensive consultant recommending you devise a ‘Digital Strategy’.
- Define the new capabilities required. Inevitably new capabilities will replace the ones that made you successful last century. This part of the evolution can be very confronting and painful, but is inevitable. It can also chew up lots of cash, which is often hard to justify using the short term quantitative measures we favour over taking a longer term, but more qualitative view of what the future might look like.
Nothing about a digital transformation is easy, but if it was, anyone could do it successfully, and we know from observation that is not true.
Header credit. Another stinging but insightful cartoon by Tom Fishburne at www.marketoonist.com
