Digital transformation, Growth mindset, and Scaled Agile for Organization transformation - Part 1

Almost every organization is either going through a digital transformation or will get started sooner than later. I have been involved in multiple such large scale transformations at Pitney Bowes, Encyclopedia Britannica, and RateGain ranging from an old hardware waterfall process to agile & lean, print media to digital product & digital-enabled physical and monolithic product to customer-centric real-time highly available, scalable cloud platform respectively. One thing which was common in these three transformations was that it was driven by the top leadership taking a holistic approach to both cultural and technology shifts together. Microsoft which is undoubtedly advance in technology is off lately going through a cultural shift towards growth mindset under Satya's leadership. He recently said "If you take two kids in school, let's say one of them has a lot of innate capability but is a know-it-all. The other person has less innate capability but is a learn-it-all. You know how that story ends. Ultimately, the learn-it-all will do better than the know-it-all. And that, I think, is true for CEOs. It's true for companies." 

In my previous few articles, I discussed lean philosophy, dual-track agile, DevOps, related metrics, and data platform to support transformation. People and businesses across the world are learning and adapting to work from home which has similarities with remote and geographically distributed teams working. Scaled agile with some adaptation along with storing collaboration, knowledge sharing, and virtual engagement tools will become a norm. I will share my viewpoints on scaled agile in my next post. In this article, I focus on the growth mindset. With the world moving towards virtual, digital security will become of paramount importance. A topic that I have included in my blog post backlog for a future post.  

A culture of a growth mindset is based on the simple philosophy of continuous learning. Technology is changing rapidly, so is the business dynamics and people's expectations. So an organization has to continuously evolve, and adapt for which it has to be lean and agile. Lean and agile are concepts and processes that help the organization in becoming more adaptable to change but for the change to be relevant it has to have a growth mindset. A mindset of non-stop learning, learning from past, forward-looking, experimentation and exploration. A system where efforts are rewarded as compared to skills and heroism. A system where quarterly, monthly and weekly goals are set and monitored continuously to take positive decisions at every level in the organization. Leaders set the grand vision, whereas the individual teams set their strategy and ensure everyone's accountability. New ideas and ways of work are encouraged. Processes are defined and set-up for experimentation and test. 

Human psychology has three major approaches - biological approach, behavioral & cognitive approach, and person-centric approach. The two approaches other than biological support human behavior are based on social, cultural and surrounding exposure. At the same time, science has proven that the neurogenesis process in adults can create new neurons. So it is obvious that a growth mindset culture can be created in an organization with people who are open to learning and have a proven track record of continuously learning.

As a leader, our job is not only to hire, retain and harness people with learning ability but also to become a role model who is constantly learning. Old hards with fixed midset may hamper the cultural transformation, so they are either isolated or assigned proven well-defined tasks. As a leader, we hire people with a track record of learning over someone elite colleges and profound skills. We define and set up processes where creativity, innovation, and learning flourish, employee engagement improves creating a culture of growth and everyone's success.