Behind the transformation: Is it really about technology?

Many organizations are in some form of transformation or change process currently, be it to implement new business models, better customer experience, new ways of working, new technology or simply to drive digitization (which to me is supporting/replacing processes with algorithms/data). In either way, technology usually plays a role. That is good, because after 20 years in the TMT sector I am still fascinated, what technology can do and what problems it can solve (with increasing effectivity). On the other hand, it is equally fascinating, looking back to the transformations I have been leading or being part of, that it was never the technology determining about success or failure of those initiatives. It was mainly people. I believe, a successful transformation is 10% technology and 90% people. In this article I will share some of the learnings I had in the fields that I consider success critical for most change and digitization initiatives.

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1. Inspiration: Switch the lighthouse on for orientation! People need to reduce uncertainty by having orientation about the way ahead and by connecting this to a purpose that makes it worth the effort. It’s not about telling the most compelling story about the latest innovations, it is about painting a desired future state and making people (employees and customers) understand what is in it for them. Recommendation: Talk about saving the princess (the new/better) rather than getting rid of the dragon (the old/worse) because talking too much about the dragon burns it even deeper into peoples‘ heads (and triggers loss aversion in people who helped build the dragon).
2. Engagement: Make your team engaged (not just “happy”)! Engagement is not about an obligation (or even the possibility) to make people happy. It is about authentically showing them that they are competent/worthy (and therefore have autonomy), that they are liked and that they make progress in meaningful work. And engagement for me has a lot to do with giving people the psychological safety of showing them that it is not only ok to bring their true self to work and to speak their true mind but that this is desired and necessary for progress. Implementing Artificial Intelligence, for example, is not really about motivation for the most effective algorithms – it is about addressing personal fears of losing relevance or the job. Recommendation: Tell people authentically if you like them and ask them what they think. And praise for effort not accomplishment because only praising for accomplishment makes people reluctant of getting out of the comfort zone (from a place of accomplishment they can only lose).
3. Emotional Intelligence: Ride the rollercoaster! There will be upwards- and downwards swings in your transformation. Especially at the beginning, when we overestimate ourselves, we are all upbeat (I am with Dunning/Kruger on this one… the less competence we have in an area the more we overestimate ourselves in that area). But in the middle (when we hit the valley of disillusionment, it is almost the opposite ?Everything looks like a failure in the middle“ (Rosabeth Moss Kanter). Sometimes the ups and downs change quite quickly (tipping points rather than continuous curves) and there is no way to know if/when the next upturn or downtown comes. Often, it’s not about a delay in launch readiness, it is about keeping confidence (and keeping all stakeholders together) when you still don’t know if you will ever launch. Recommendation: Concentrate on the next incremental step in a beneficial direction. Show authenticity/vulnerability on the upswing as well as on the downswing (eg. talk sincerely about how you feel in both) and invite your team to do the same.
4. Collaboration: Build bridges (and role model doing so)! When running cross-functional topics in complex and dynamic environments, nobody wins alone. A team needs to collaborate in order to build trust in order to have difficult discussions in order to figure out the right solutions that they are committed to. For example, often it is not really about end-to-end process optimization – it is about making people stick their heads together besides the human tendency to build tribes (=silos). Recommendation: Only say ?we“ (not ?I“ and not ?they“), listen/understand first (deeply, not just on the surface) and only then develop/state your opinion.
5. Openness/Learning: Think customer-first, think outside-in and think future-back! Especially in stressful contexts (like in the middle of a transformation) we tend to stick with what we know and aim for too low. That is interesting because usually it is the nature of the technology/transformation, to do things radically better. Yet, we often end up in a copy-paste to the current situation. Analytics based customer loyalty management, for example, is not about the integration of propensity models into current ways of running campaigns – it is about a different ways of working and shifting from a product view to a customer view. Recommendation: Ask ?How does Great really look like?“ and create a mindset of curiosity in which people understand that (the speed of) learning is the only differentiator and the only insurance policy in our complex/dynamic world.

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I hope, these impulses will make your transformation (more) successful, and I trust that you will discover the various positive feedback loops that they can kick off, such as more orientation leading to more engagement leading to more collaboration/trust leading to bolder thinking and more commitment/ownership for implementation. Enjoy the rollercoaster into the future! ;o)