Caution! Not for everyone!

This is starting to get tricky now. I've done a few articles to help me handle my later life grumpiness (my business tourettes as I now refer to it) and realised I'm not alone. Other people are connecting with me who seem to be harbouring similar, intrusive thoughts (best part is it's not confined to the over 40's and 50's!!!)

This article is quite a long rant, in fact it's the longest I've done to date. (I'm saying this so you can jump ship early on if you've other more useful things to be getting on with or make yourself a cup of tea). I've noticed now that people put an estimated reading time on their articles - well I've no idea how long this takes to read because I'm not you?

The nice part of people connecting and saying positive things (and the majority really do) is that this brings a level of comfort knowing I'm not alone. I should say that although my articles may sound like I'm Victor Meldrew* however in real life I'm actually positive, upbeat and a happy "kind a guy" (although writing that phrase did make me wince) six days out of seven. On the seventh I tend to write a LinkedIn article...

I have to acknowledge though, that given the absolute mystery of the linkedin sharing algorithm and the fact that I'm not Oleg Vishnepolsky (Oleg can publish a post saying "Hello I'm Oleg" and it gets 60,000 likes) means that this article may only be seen by one man and his dog,

In the past when I I've said this I've also added, as long as the man or the dog share my world view it's fine. But of course if I'm being really honest it's not! Why - because I've not yet mastered my ego - a fatal flaw and one which I suspect only a few folks really manage in their lives. So I still want likes and shares because in space no-one can hear you scream.

Also can I apologise in advance to the grammar police who sometimes message me privately. I do make mistakes with full stops, commas and semi-colons; quite a lot (struggled since I was four with this).

Tipping points!

To date I've written/ranted about

1. Enterprise Architects, then I moved onto the
2. Great big bloody agile bandwagon (seriously WTF is going on there), so feeling on a bit of a roll having exorcised those particular demons (or at least shared them)

...I decided that the phrase "Digital Transformation" (more so weirdly than digital disruption) was the next area that is now making me want to bang my head on the table till I pass out (actually it's been irritating me for well over four years now - I'm just a bit slow to put pen to paper). I should stress this isn't an attack on people who've got these words in their title, they're usually smart folks who've been appointed to try and orchestrate some sort of coherent response that the exec needs - not an easy job!

NO. It's the way in which the term is, I feel, overused which in turn sort of devalues it, for me. If you disagree - you can bail out here and you've only wasted a minute or two of your life.

(Actually as I was writing this I realised that in many ways it's probably just the digital term that is the real target of my frustration....ie Digital Business Analyst, Digital Project Manager, etc...it won't be long before I see a job advert for an an Agile, digital, CX driven project based scrum master...)

Increasingly I think it's becoming a bit of a "King's clothes" term....

"look at the king, look at the king and his wonderful cloak of digital transformation "

As with my EA and Agile rant's I'm not writing this from just a casual bystanders position. I've really had a crack at this "digital disruption/transformation" stuff....OR HAVE I??? (I'll come back to that later!)

So anyway...this months rant was triggered by a two things really;

1. I've recently been on a bit of reading and video watching binge, covering shed loads of materials from Mckinsey, CapGemini, Gartner, IBM, HP, Cutter, Forrestor, Deloitte, Mulesoft and Thoughtworks all of them providing a variation on their take on digital transformation (and disruption thrown in for good measure). Some of the articles/vids are good (in particular aside from the ridiculous OTT music and 5 minute introductions from VIP's the CapGemini video with Didier Bonnett was I thought a genuinely good watch) and some are like a giant bland apple pie in terms of insight (seriously KPMG, seriously?), however putting aside my personal prejudices for a second, they all have a core theme which I've attempted to summarise later on!
2. BUT much more importantly my 22 year old daughter, whose just started work with the HiveMind Network in our member care function, asked me to explain digital transformation in a bit more detail as she felt it would be useful to understand the term, considering how many times she sees it in our expert members bio's and micro-firm overviews. Her response after my long drawn out explanation (which may or may not be right) really brought everything home to me....

Isn't that...just, er....obvious?"

The more I thought about this point, the more I thought, "yes, to you it probably is", and for many of her peers working in young, modern and progressive companies they'd probably think a similar thing. Now if at this point you're thinking...

... "well I'm off then Dave, because I'm one of those under 30 folks who work in a building with beanbags and exposed brick walls and my boss and I drink chai latte together , I don't need to read and share in your sadness and cynicism..."

Don't Go Yet, please stay, please!

I need you to stay because, you're important! From my own personal experience we, the old farts need you. We need you to be in teams of mixed skills and ideally ages, We need you to be confident to ask some of the most obvious questions and keep questioning when you get a "stock" answer, we need you to go...."er....isn't that obvious!", and that's means you've got to stay brave. We also need you to take your experiences of working in the exposed brick and chai latte world and keep it in your heart as your career progresses and your influence grows...before the pressures of life make you compromise and stay silent. As an aside I've met young old people and old young people. It's not really an age thing, it's a mindset thing, oh and on the whole the second group really depress me and I try and avoid them nowadays).

OK, so what's my problem with the "Digital Transformation" phrase?

If you want some proper heavyweight and smart thinking around this then I'd suggest you go connect and read some of Venkataraman Ramachandran's stuff (Venky) or John Sheridans stuff...beautifully crafted and elegant thinking which I love to read.

My own stuff is in the nicest possible sense pissed off silent visceral screams interwoven with sarcasm and little islands of optimism.

That's what being British does to you I think, and why I suspect I get more connection requests from Australians and New Zealanders than Americans, who seem to have an eternal in-built hope system (always good to culturally stereotype 320m+ people via linked in?!)

So I tried to write down my "problem with Digital Transformation" to help me then share what I'd love to see change. I'd love it if you've got others to add to this list... :-)!

(Disclaimer!* I think it's only fair and reasonable that I also acknowledge at this point that there are organisations out there who are quietly and effectively evolving and re-inventing themselves without all the hullabaloo of the digital transformation banner.)

Sorry, back to the list;

1. It's a huge generic marketing term which seems to cover a broad spectrum, but there's no agreement on the width of the aforementioned spectrum - that I've come across, so it feels increasingly meaningless, or to quote the Incredibles (my level of intellectual sophistication) - "And when everyone's super, no one will be" - Syndrome
2. It seems that it's very often prevalent in really big companies who don't seem to look or behave any different in spite of spending millions on their "digital transformation" usually with the same partners who themselves are light years from "digitally transformed".
3. It often feels like a variation on the "shiny new city story" that's been sold for the last three decades by the global consulting firms to make oodles of cash (I used to sell them and am still seeking atonement for when the ascension begins)?
4. It all too often seems to be a generic container for a few new technologies, some journey mapping, a new website and a bunch of customer centric platitudes rather than profound transformational change (see item 1)?
5. Perhaps the biggest issue for me personally, is that all too often it seems to mean transformation for everyone in the organisation except the exec themselves!?

Why do I care ? (and why do you care, assuming you do if you've got this far in my rant?)

Because from my own personal experiences over the last few years the organisations who are often nowadays called "digital" are generally enjoyable, and invigorating places to work (and yes I'm sure there are rubbish "digital" employers but stay with me, I'm generalising)

They work hard at communication and sharing, their management is progressive and open, they tend to be as transparent as they can be and dealing with them as a customer is pleasant. So I care because I've experienced the other side as well.

The political managers (at all levels - not just the middle) who sap energy and enthusiasm and confidence, the directors who believe they've all the answers in a ridiculously complex world and the staff who know how crap something is for the customer (or citizen if you're in the public sector), but can't make one iota's difference because of the above. These are dark dark places to work.

...and there's the rub. Everything I've described above was true before the advent of "digital" and remains true "post digital".

In fact when John Lewis wrote his constitution in 1929 which talked about the "Happiness of its members" as its core purpose, he was aspiring to create a better retail business and arguably did so according to my wife's viewpoint (and mine as well).

I'm not sure if John Lewis are running a digital transformation programme (they probably are - everyone is) but if they are then I'd like to hope that it manages to retain their constitutional purpose whilst weaving in the "digital" elements. If it doesn't they've taken leave of their senses. (I get the stuff about scale and reach of digital etc - but you get my drift I hope)

So is it possible to define what "digital and transformation" is in a way that is actually useful beyond trying to sell some consultancy?

I mentioned earlier about the volume of reading I've just finished. Along the way I was scribbling down notes to try and create some sort of "consensus table" from the different documents to share with the Hive Network members. I did also found myself asking as I was reading this stuff...

Why do we all keep reading the same stuff, which tells the same story?

The Digital Diet Book?

I think it's a bit like diet books, lots of people writing lots of stuff about loosing weight but in the end it's all the same....eat less and do some exercise. If you've got the willpower it will work.

Problem is, that doesn't really sell books or make anyone any money. In a way I think that's what the digital word has become, the diet book for the early 21st Century?!

"Try our 100 day digital detox programme to get your company in tip top shape for the future..."

So all the advisors and consultants create their own Atkins, or Smoothie, or Juice diet and show before and after pics...and many organisations go for it. Hook, line and sinker. Why?

I reckon it's because we hope it will fast track our re-invention to becoming those beanbag owning, chai latte drinking cool and trendy digerati where our elastic workforce shifts seamlessly from holocratic circle to holocratic circle adopting roles as swiftly as putting on a new shirt, supported by saint like servant leadership, whilst flowing cards across the whiteboard supported by wonderful, insightful agile coaches raising us to new levels of perfomance and empathy. Ok - look - if I'm honest I love all of those things I've just written, and wished they were true everywhere!!!

(btw I also believe this is why many of the big corporates are so keen to adopt frameworks for things like agile. It has a seductive appeal that it will fast track them through the difficult problems. It's only experience that tells you it won't)

...and then of course the same people who offered the digital diet, roll out the old (and apparently - untrue) 70% of transformation programmes fail stats, even though half of them convinced the exec to do it in the first place...DOH!...and bloody DOH!

I'd go as far as to argue that if you are successful in "digitally transforming" it should in theory be the last "transformation" you go through unless you're acquired or sold?

The Digital Imposter Syndrome!

I'm not digital enough, I'm a failure. When I've done on-line assessments or listened to some of the gurus out there, if our companies aren't Unicorns (and there's a term that literally makes me want to throw myself in my local drowning pool, the Strid), or we've not disrupted the global business ecosystem like Amazon or AirBnB, or Uber we've failed. If we've not gone big we all need to go home, we've failed, if we've not ****insert any Tony Robbins quote here **** etc etc. we've failed. Or have we, really? No, we bloody well haven't.

So I started to think could I find, make or bastardise some sort of table within which I could measure stuff I've done in my own "digital space" rather than constantly having to acknowledge that unsurprisingly we've not got IT in the Hive (substitute your own company its probably still true) as good as amazon, facebook, AirBNB or google's and that we've yet to get holocracy working across the entire network.

So I had a go at this but readily acknowledge that almost all of my colleagues and friends will be able to do a better version - that's something else I've learned since getting into design thinking in a big way - everyone else can and does have better ideas!

To do the model means first of all - I think! - agreeing what constitutes "being digital" - as I've then assumed that Digital Transformation means becoming this thing - reasonable I hope?

Digital?

I've shared this one before (like all older people I repeat myself) but I think it's worthy of sharing again in this rant. About five or six years ago when I was an Exec Partner at Gartner (a sort of friendly research butler, retired CIO and sounding board for Gartner clients,) I came up with an approach to try and help teams to realise that the Digital word meant all sorts of different things to them. I'd give them each a pile of post it notes, a sharpie (even then I was carrying sharpies) and then hold up a big card with the word "DIGITAL" written on it and then say "write down what came into your head when you saw that word - one word on each card". Now this works best if there's a range of folks in the session, it's a bit less interesting with very small groups.

As you can guess dependent on mix of the audience I would get a diverse range of cards.... "radio", "camera", "telly", "internet", "change", "modern", "new", "worry", "youth", "analogue (!?)", "connection", etc....

We'd then cluster stuff together and generally everyone would accept that there wasn't a consensus (old groups tended more toward the things like telly and camera, younger more toward change related terms, the youngest just thought it was a stupid question). Then we'd look at the cards and agree a consensus definition. Probably 70% of the time something along the lines of "modern, connected, agile organisation" would emerge (agile as in the ability to sense and respond to change rapidly as opposed to people doing extreme programming (surprisingly not spelt Xtreme) and standing around a whiteboard holding a talking stick or teddy bear.

As you can imagine in many ways the final agreed statement was not as important as getting folks to understand and build something they could all share and agree upon.

and Transformation?

Well this is easier because there's a genuine definition;

"A marked change in form, nature, or appearance". Cool...seems pretty straightforward.

So my own mental model formed from these early experiences, and it's mine, not something I'm claiming should be yours or anyone elses, has for quite a while been something along the lines of....

"Digital transformation is an organisation morphing into something more adaptive and responsive so that it can survive and flourish in our connected world, where modern technology combined with progressive management thinking means it can better serve it's customers, colleagues and stakeholders".

It's not very pithy or soundbitey, i know, but it worked for me. I equally don't think it's really about transforming, I think for me it's something that is more continuous, more about accelerated evolution of some sort?

BUT WHO CARES WHAT MY MENTAL MODEL IS. Only me.

So what do all those other folks in those big expensive advisory/consultancies think, Given we pay them upwards of ￡1700 a day (actually last I heard they were heading towards a composite closer to ￡2k?) they must be right, surely (you wouldn't think I've friends in these firms would you!)

The "consensus table" - here goes and I'm happy to take on board amendments folks, especially from the firms themselves if I've got it wrong! There were subtle variations but across all the stuff they've all written this was more or less what I could extract? (I'm sure SAP, Microsoft will have a similar mantra but probably with their own technology push)

(I know it's not the most exciting table in the world, and I'd love to understand if the advisors/coaches have taken on board all of their own advice?)

Oh no here comes the quadrant (not a magic one I hasten to add)

So as surely as the planets revolve around the sun I was then compelled to try and generate a quadrant (old habits die hard), attempting to squeeze lots of information and subjective analysis into a too small, too summarised area.

So I reckon for me, it's something similar to the CapGemini model but I felt compelled to even mod that a bit, so I could try and map my own experiences against...

Then when I look at this I can even go back over the last twenty plus or so years of my career and plot some of the "stuff" I've helped do, which made me realise its not all been big transformation stuff that I so often used to shout about as a 30 year old, more sort of big improvement stuff and occasionally almost transformational, but not quite! (see my much earlier point about have I really done transformation).

So as an example around 12 to 14 years ago I was part of a team delivering a ￡100m+ transformation programme. (I've done others since but this one sticks in my head). Reality was it was probably really in the top left quadrant - ie mostly tech with a bit of change in working practices. Transformation, no not really. Same business model, same management mindset etc. Was it a failure? No, it made things a bit better - it IMPROVED things - it didn't transform people's lives and experiences. Interestingly a few of us could see HOW it could have been transformational but the appetite for that level of disruption simply didn't exist.

Also made the think that I can't be alone in this experience. Just how many big programmes have truly TRANSFORMED a business on both axis...really. (As an aside it's why I do have time for what the government digital services stuff in the UK is trying to do....it looks like they want to try and transform government working practices - just that in itself must be such hard slog in such a traditional and bureaucratic world)

Which finally made me appreciate that even my best change experience of my career to date (leading rather than supporting) it really was a "journey" (I know, I know - isn't everything).

Northern Gas started it's change journey when the CEO Mark started to change the way management thought and worked and put customers at the heart of the company, I joined three years after this and introduced agile working practices (not only in IT) and did some interesting tech enablement with the fab teams that work there. It was this combination of events and mutual ambitions that enabled the journey to a "better place".

Equally the NGN journey isn't over, however given the nature of what a gas company does I'm not sure they will ever need to change their core business model - aka the digital mantra of Uber (as an aside I'm not clear in my head uber is a new business model - but happy to have one of my clever friends tell me if I'm wrong), AirBNB etc. Does this mean that they've not digitally transformed - does it bollocks. In a few more years the way in which a Gas Distribution Company works will be light years from today - literally one man and his AI dog will be able to run it.

Equally if the CEO had not embarked on a mission to change the mindset and culture of the company not for a minute do I believe I'd have been able to pursue my "Enterprise Agility" ambition with such speed and impact. NO. So for me transformation is both smart tech, be that AI, IoT, Cloud, API economy, 3D printing, drones, blockchain, autonomous vehicles, etc etc and progressive modern management (agile, empowered teams, continuous delivery, networked organisations, holocracy, etc etc), When they come together with true top level support it's a beautiful magical and I suspect, very rare, moment!

Are there lots of different paths do you think, and where would you put yours???

So at the start I complained about the phrase digital transformation and what I'd love to see changed. As I've written this article it helped me crystalise why it has irritated me more and more over the years and its because I really do want organisations to become better places to work and in the process make a better experience for customer and partners. In effect;

• Where customer and colleague experiences are interwoven.
• Where techniques like design thinking/co-creation, agile delivery, are just a part of the fabric of the company and not stuck in a functional silo,
• ...where innovation and experimentation are everyone's business not the "special" division.
• Where tech isn't the preserve of IT and where it's an accelerator not a brake...

...and doing that probably means tackling the points in the earlier consensus table and unsurprisingly this means for big changes it's got to be owned and continuously driven by the top folks. Which means them also looking long and hard at themselves and that's the hardest thing in the world to do (and why agile coaches can be so disturbing people ..."well what do you think Dave, how might you have approached that Dave, ...in my experience Dave....JUST TELL ME THE ANSWER PLEASEeeee!).

So the improvement I'd love to see? If we're going to use the phrase then lets be honest with where we are on the spectrum and try not to "big it up" to bolster our egos and cv's, but to simply share learning and experiences on where we are on the "journey" :-)! Oh and for the big boys on the journey let's see the board room looking long and hard at their own behaviours, drivers and "personas" as part of the change?

So I need to stop worrying then? Why? Because I assume before I finally retire to spend my time shouting at political news shows, I will probably see other words replace digital for the next round of transformations? Do you know I bet there's a Gartner analyst out there already working out what the word is ;-).

A Happy Ending

To finish on a big personal positive - I was chatting to a nice chap from one of those really big companies only a few dexays ago and he told me that "we're stopping using the digital transformation expression in XXXXXXX, we realised it doesn't really mean anything, It's just part of our business."

I really wanted to hug him, but it seemed too early in our relationship.

Bye for now

Thanks and well done on getting to the end please comment if you can be arsed it's always good to get others insight and thoughts.

Hopefully see you again at my next ramble/rant. I'm off to have my chai latte and get down with the kids.

Dave