Afraid that disconnected projects may undermine your digital transformation?

"All of humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone," wrote Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher.?People, it turns out, have an action bias, which means that when a problem arises, we feel compelled to act in order to gain control and eliminate it. While this action bias is advantageous because it encourages us to favour action over inaction, it frequently leads to impulsive and unplanned actions. This may cause us to take a less effective path, compromising the situation's outcome. For example, we've probably all tried to avoid highway traffic by taking the closest exit that seemed to keep us moving, only to discover that it's ineffective and wastes time and fuel.

Our unwillingness to sit alone with our thoughts may not be the root of all our problems, but it has, in my opinion, resulted in a slew of fragmented digital projects across many organizations. According to a Mckinsey 2020 study, organizations frequently focus on technology initiatives without considering the big picture or the critical dependencies required to execute the transformation.

It is understandable that businesses may sometimes end up with disconnected activities. One possibility is that rising customer and employee demand for digital services during the covid epidemic forced them to digitize. It could also be a reaction to market events, the difficulty of collaborating across silos, succumbing to the latest "flashy" technologies, or simply falling for the pressure to jump on the "digital transformation" bandwagon, which is now undeniably a buzzword. All of these are logically likely to result in action bias, which in this context entails the urge to act without considering the big picture. As a result, there is no proactive management of dependencies, and digital initiatives are scattered across multiple teams. Eventually, the organization is unable to maximize the value of its digital investments because the digital initiatives may not be aligned with its overall strategy.

For example, a company may migrate its IT infrastructure to the cloud, invest in data platforms, hire data scientists, and create an app to improve customer service. In the same company, some functions may be unable to access data and are unaware of how it can benefit their team's work, there may be a lack of a cyber security strategy, data scientists may have limited visibility into business units, and the back office may be insufficiently automated to support the colorful Apps. As a result, the organization will miss out on benefits such as automation, scale, flexibility, better decision-making, and increased efficiencies that come with digital technology adoption. Despite the fact that most business leaders understand the importance of digital transformation and are eager to explore the benefits of various technological capabilities, these organizations lack a guiding strategy to guide the transformation agenda.

To get the most out of its digital transformation, the organization must coordinate its many digital initiatives. The question then becomes, how can we bring these separate digital projects together to help the business achieve its primary goal?

I present a five-step plan to help your organization to determine its digital transformation objective and link it to the broader organizational strategy, define digitization priorities, and move forward in a coordinated manner that enables you to achieve your overall organizational objectives. This process, which I assembled after examining a wide range of leading business literature, will provide you with a systematic approach to progress your digital journey with confidence.

1. Identify and agree on the organization's main transformation drivers and objectives so that everyone is on the same page. This will be the basis for defining the organization's digital transformation vision. You can achieve this by facilitating discussions between the various business functions. At this point, important questions to discuss include: What is the overall vision of the organization? What are the most pressing issues and their root causes? How can you respond most effectively to the digital disruption in your context? How can you take advantage of all the opportunities the digital revolution offers you? How will the change affect the involved parties? At the end of this stage, major stakeholders in your organization will have agreed on how the future will be different from the present once the digital transformation is done. In other words, this step will enable you to define the purpose of your digital transformation. For example, the transformation could cut costs, change your business model, get your product to market faster, improve the customer experience, grow your innovation, and create new sources of revenue.

2. Define the scope of your digital transformation by identifying the critical areas that must be addressed for your digital transformation to succeed. This stage will ensure that you focus on what matters rather than taking a theoretical approach that may lead to you digitizing for the sake of digitizing. Industry studies on successful organizations show that the critical elements will often involve people, processes, and applicable technology tools. For example, suppose your organization's primary priority is to increase customer loyalty by improving the customer experience. Then, your digitization initiatives will probably focus on specific end-user experiences, scaling your analytics to better understand your customers, developing digital channels, and cultivating a culture that puts the customer first.

3. Define the success criteria for each of the elements identified in step 2, and then assess your progress toward the desired endpoint. This is the fundamental principle behind what is known as the Digital Maturity Index.?This step serves two purposes. It lets you detect the gaps between the current state and the expected future state, and also serves as a reference point once the transformation process is complete. The identified gaps will help you determine the necessary initiatives and resources to implement them, as well as the priority for the different digitization projects.

4.?Create a roadmap for each essential element by breaking the identified gaps into distinct, manageable phases now that you know where you are on the transformation journey for each.

5. Track and monitor execution through two key governance elements. One, create a single point of contact, perhaps by forming a centralized team to oversee all digitization activities and keep priorities on track. Second, use a goal-oriented approach to execution by tracking and optimizing performance regularly.

Considering the high failure rate and high cost of digital transformations, take a step-by-step approach aimed at delivering a thorough and well-coordinated transformation effort to increase your chances of success. It may appear to be a huge challenge, but consolidating all of your organization's scattered projects will be well worth the effort. Don't put it off any longer. Get started. And keep going forward. Your organization will be thankful.