Digital Transformation Series - 1 Getting The Foundation Right

Having been through several transformation (forced or planned) exercise during my career, it would be good to summarize and share my experiences and POV about this topic, especially revolving around Digital. While many organizations and experts have different view on how to conduct a successful and impactful digital transformation, I hope my angle will help to complement and give you better insights on digital transformation in China.?

5 key areas will be covered over in the next few articles, mainly:?

1.?????Getting the foundation right

2.?????Culture: Transformation can be successful if we have support from our people?

3.?????Organization Readiness: What are some of the key bottleneck areas that need to be addressed before embarking on transformation journey

4.?????Market Readiness: Identify external leading (not lagging) indicators before planning and investing for transformation???

5.?????Strategy: Now we are ready to talk about strategy

Let’s get this week's conversation going!?

1.?Getting the Foundation Right??

Champion?

If you are a leader reading this article and is tasked with transformation for your organization, one of the most important and critical tasks is to immediately identify and appoint a Champion. If you are tasked but not a management level executive (very often this is the case for most organization), then it is equally important to start identifying and securing support from a potential Champion in your organization.??

So, who qualifies as a champion??

A champion ideally is a subject matter expert (though sometimes they are not) and must be ready to push through the existing red tapes and deadlocks to move progress along. The champion understands the Vision, is familiar with the company culture, has relationship with key stakeholders and is not afraid to get into the ring to defend the task.?

The best scenario is the most senior leadership person (CEO / C-suite) within the organization on the topic of transformation becomes the Champion. If it’s about pivoting the entire company from traditional ledger to Digital ledger, the CFO should be the champion. If it’s about pivoting from traditional marketing to digital marketing, the CDO should be the champion. If it’s about pivoting from traditional production to smart production, the Head of Supply chain should be the champion. Et cetera.??

This champion will be and should be there to support, nurture and collaborate the transformation initiatives to ensure that plans come to fruition.?

Goal??

Many times, we assume that vision of the company automatically cascade down to the vision of a transformation exercise. I beg to differ.?

As champion or leader or members of the transformation team (yes, it’s a team and not a one-man job!), we are all working towards a common endgame that is quantifiable, measurable, and visible. It is not the role of the CEO or C-suites to describe this goal but depending on the transformation team to collectively work towards articulating the goal.?

To get to the articulation of the goal, teams that are involved or impacted by the transformation will need to get together and be engaged from start to ensure their operationally insights and challenges are heard. Once the goalpost is identified and drawn, team will be able to quantify their efforts, initiatives, and describable outcome at the end of the transformation exercise.?

My personal experiences tell me this is the hardest part of the transformation exercise, having our colleagues brave enough to come forward sharing their department’s failings and owning the responsibility leading up to change. Yes, once again, it is the responsibility of the team to own the responsibility of transformation and not just the leader’s responsibility.??

Only with full transparency of the long and short of current conditions in the organization, will the transformation leader and its champion, able to effectively articulate the goal of the transformation exercise.??

Once the buy-in from leadership team is secured, the real work begin.?

In my next article, Let’s look at how Culture can really make or break a transformation exercise.?

Have a great weekend!?

Justin?