5 Tips for Tackling Business Transformation (2 min read)

Working at the intersection of marketing, technology and creativity gives me a unique perspective on the challenges of business transformation and innovation. Here are some simple tips for dealing with challenges as you start your planning for 2019.

Here they are:

1. Begin by building a high-performance team
2. Thinking must start from the consumer experience
3. Make innovation part of everyone's DNA
4. Data-informed thinking must be embedded in the culture
5. Collaboration is key

1. Begin by building a high-performance team

Digital skills are in high demand and short supply. But first things first, how do you define a digital team when nearly everything is digital? Digital teams are responsible for developing, testing, and implementing a strategy to reach and engage target audiences through digital channels like web, mobile, and social. While other groups may draft the messaging, a digital team works hand-in-hand with marketing and product leaders to curate and create digital-first content strategy. Read more on building a high-performance digital team at HBR.ORG

2. Thinking must start from the consumer experience

Your consumer or user-facing strategy must be driven by the consumer experience. Don't believe you know what it "should be" otherwise you are doomed to failure. If you build it, they will not come - a mantra that might have saved many entrepreneurs from disappointment and defeat!

3. Make innovation part of everyone's DNA

"There needs to be a sense of where you are trying to go and how you will get there-as well as a vision of the fundamental change you want to make and how digital transformation can deliver it," says Perry Hewitt, Harvard Chief Digital Officer.

Yes, digital transformation discussions are shifting more from the “how” to the “who.” Process and methodology debates have turned into the operational challenge of how best to boost people’s capabilities. For many firms, the innovation agenda is now as much about human capital investment as delivering new products and services.

Throw people into projects to really make digital part of everyone’s job. Have them work together to figure it out as they go. Immersion is especially important for senior leadership.

4. Data-informed thinking must be embedded in the culture

Understand what to track, and create a culture of continuous measurement. Be careful that people do not become obsessed with the numbers for numbers’ sake. Define what is actionable, and use data to drive that action.

5. Collaboration is key

I have written a great deal on this subject already. It turns out that communication difficulties and old rules of business have conditioned us, as workers, to avoid collaboration.

As Don Tapscott has noted, learning to collaborate is "part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy". I would go one step further, and say learning to collaborate is not just competitively advantageous in a digital transformation economy, but it is a means of rediscovering our natural, creative and decidedly social selves.

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Anthony J James was awarded LinkedIn's Most Influential Agency Voice in Asia Pacific. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post maybe try one of these as well.