Common Pitfalls of Digital Transformation - Part 2

Last week, I shared Part 1 of a two-part series on the common pitfalls of digital transformation. If you missed it, click here for the article as a whole. Below are pitfalls 6-10.

Pitfall 6: Skills and capabilities gap?

It would be odd if you could modernize your organization based on the existing set of skills and capabilities.

I was once advised, when you look at the business strategy, what about it will be hard for people? In that answer are the breadcrumbs you need to follow to surface skills and capabilities gaps.

What do I mean by capabilities? Here’s my unsophisticated definition. To knock it out of the park, what do you need to be able to “do in your sleep”?

Knocking it out of the park for anyone in a customer-facing role if not today, definitely in the future, means anticipating their needs. That takes analytical skills. Insight-generation capabilities. I need to be so good at getting insight out of data, I could do it in my sleep. Not right away of course, but that’s the learning path.

Pitfall 7: Weak Communications

Our calendars are full of meetings but too often, I sit back and think, “Do these people talk?”

I once had a client who felt out of the loop, despite leading a critical component of his organization’s transformation.

In one of our meetings, he voiced his sentiment that updates and information were being shared in watercooler conversations. If I were to go back in time knowing what I know now, I would tell him to join the watercooler.

Leaders of transformations need to talk to each other and their teams. And really talk. Come out of a meeting and ping someone. “What did you get out of that? What did you hear? What should we be making out of what was shared?” Start your day with a 15 min. check in with your colleague in another vertical. “How’s your team feeling? What’s bogging you down? Any ideas on what we can do?” End your day by checking in on a team member. “How are folks feeling? How are you feeling?”

Talk. And then talk some more.

Does it sound like a lot of work? Yes. But it takes more brainpower to navigate a transformation in ambiguity loaded with assumptions, than it does to have a few conversations.

Pitfall 8: Culture gap?

I’ve spent time helping organizations become data driven to increase the quality and speed of decision-making. We invested in technology solutions and mobilized project teams. But we mobilized within a culture of:

• Hoarding information
• Relying on gut instincts and distrusting the digits
• Risk aversion fueling a closed by default architecture; which bleeds into behaviors

The assumption is we can maneuver around culture to achieve goals.

But we can’t.

There’s a reason why the catch phrase “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” exists.

Pitfall 9: Overambitious scope?

We’ve all seen this. We secure massive budgets and launch enterprise-wide transformation. Why? We optimize for cost efficiency. We commit to a big scope to avoid rework. The logic: “If we’re going to solve this, let’s solve it once.”

The alternative? Optimize for risk. Break the big scope into smaller parts. Focus on what you can do to deliver value in the short term. Do you risk rework? Sure. But the momentum you create by delivering value in the short term counters whatever rework you might have to do.

Pitfall 10: Business/Tech Divide

I had a client organization undergoing an enterprise-wide transformation (classic pitfall 9 situation.) One of our verticals was particularly excited about the technology being implemented. They had a business requirement that presented challenge in delivering in the current state.

They mobilized Subject Matter Experts to gather business and data requirements and identify new processes. They packaged months of work and presented it to IT.

IT looked at in and delivered the hard news. The solution being implemented wasn’t designed to handle transactional data, which this program needed to meet their requirement. After months of work, it’s not surprising that the reaction from the business was “Well, what value is this then?”

How did they get into this situation? By working in isolation. By thinking you can toss requirements over the fence and say “Make it so.”

Is it hard working with IT departments? My friend, that’s a whole other article. Suffice it to say that working in isolation to avoid the hardship isn’t the answer.

I’m a History major. I believe in learning from the past to avoid the same mistakes in the future. If I’m sharing this, it’s because there needs to be greater transparency and discussions around failed transformations. We need to collectively learn from these failures so we can better position ourselves if not in the present, at least in the future.

Let’s course correct on Pitfall #7. Let’s talk.