Digital... what??? (Perspectives of a non-expert on Digital Transformation)

The more I get older (and perhaps wiser haha), the more I like to have clarity on every problem I am trying to solve and every outcome I try to achieve, so as to avoid wasting any of my (and anyone else's) oh-so-precious time trying to solve the wrong problem or achieve undesired outcomes.

There are many tools and techniques that one can use to improve his clarity of mind, but today I'd like to focus on something that I believe we really need, but that we were not trained to have in Mauritius: the ability to challenge any "expert jargon" that we hear, by learning to improve our own vocabulary, build our own understanding, and thus make our own distinctions on things we are impacted by.

Let's take the concrete example of the term Digital Transformation. With the pandemic, Digital Transformation ('DT') has become one of the hottest business topics, and a lot of local companies are rushing to integrate DT in their strategic roadmap for the next 3 years. In parallel, a lot of service providers are now starting to brand their offering as DT services. At first sight, it looks great to have that much excitement about DT, because as a country we don't really have the choice, and will indeed need to "digitally transform" sooner rather than later to be able to survive the coming years. However, whether in the case of a company wishing to transform, or in the case of a company offering DT services, I always like to ask myself one question: are we really talking about Digital Transformation there, or is it more about Digitization or Digitalization?

As we will see later, there are important distinctions between those 3 terms, as each can lead to a very different set of outcomes, and to avoid wasting time and money in trying to solve problems and do things that don't achieve what we want, it's important to improve our own vocabulary and understanding, and make distinctions about Digital Transformation.

Building our own vocabulary

For me, the very first step in better understanding any new or unfamiliar concept (e.g. "Digital Transformation" but it can be anything like "Recycling" or "Entrepreneurship" etc) is to explore the existing vocabulary (words and their definitions) around this concept. The more we build our own vocabulary around the concept, the more we are then able to build our own understanding of it.

I started to understand the importance of building my own vocabulary, when I was trained as a corporate trainer in 2007 and got introduced to the Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes (1956) (see below). This quite impressive list of possible learning outcomes helps trainers chose the right vocabulary to clarify what a participant should be able to learn from any training session. Some very distinct examples of learning outcomes for a participant attending a training session on Digital Transformation could be: to be able to either (i) differentiate the terms Digital Transformation, Digitization and Digitalization, or (ii) determine measurable outcomes that his company would need to achieve through DT, or even (iii) design a DT implementation roadmap for his organisation. The choice of the right vocabulary to describe learning outcomes helps the trainer and the participant clarify what everyone can do and expect from the training session.

The same principle applies for other domains: the more vocabulary we have, the more we can understand and clarify what options we have, what outcomes we want, what we can do, or what people can expect from us.

Unfortunately, not all domains have very well-established frameworks like the Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes in training. To build your own vocabulary on quite recent concepts like Digital Transformation, you might need to use other techniques, the easiest ones being: reading or watching everything you can or asking people as many questions as you wish about the subject, and taking note of all the words that are repetitively used in readings, conversations or videos about DT, and of their significations. This will be your first set of vocabulary items on DT, and this set will be enriched over time. Don't worry for now if many people are using the same words, but with different significations: if you make the mental effort, you will be able to make sense of everything later, and build your own understanding of DT.

Building you own understanding

There is one principle that I really try to always apply in everything that I do: it's to build my own understanding of things. In other words, I try not to always believe what people say about something, but make the effort to understand by myself.

And this is exactly what I did in 2018, when we were starting our innovation consultancy Red Dot and I had to better understand Digital Transformation. I first read and watched everything I could about the subject (I still do by the way), started speaking to as many people as I could about it and asked hundreds of questions. I subscribed to social media groups and blogs about DT, where experts and consultants were arguing about the definition of DT terms, best practices and mindsets, or about who was doing wrong and who was doing right, etc. I liked reading these exchanges of opinions and perspectives: it helped me gather a maximum of data points and information about DT.

I looked for patterns and similarities between what everyone was saying, I tried to understand why someone was saying one thing, while another one was saying its contrary. At some point, I was able to connect the dots, and make sense of all these pieces of data and information to build my own very first level of understanding of DT.

Of course, this first level of understanding of DT had to improve over time, and is still improving now, the more I get to understand the culture and context of organisations in Mauritius, the more I meet new people with different perspectives and information, and the more I gain experience, face challenges and find solutions in DT projects. This is indeed an ongoing learning process- like so many other things in life.

But what I can tell you, for sure, is that many of the things that I had read on the net from DT experts or consultants worldwide, are probably not adapted to our local context, or are not as easily applicable here and therefore should never be taken "à la lettre" at any time! This strengthens my belief that any business leader or more generally anyone impacted by DT should build their own understanding of it, and avoid falling into any expert jargon trap or rely blindly on any service provider.

Making distinctions

When you are in the process of building your own understanding on things, you are able to make better distinctions, and thus improve the quality of your decision-making.

For example if someone tells me "I want to be an entrepreneur", I like to help the person make distinctions between various categories of entrepreneurs, so that he/she can better understand his/her options, and make better decisions: does the person want to become what I call a lifestyle entrepreneur (i.e. often working alone and making just enough money to have a decent lifestyle), run a small business with a few employees or a large organisation with many employees? Does he prefer to build a scalable startup that he can later sell? Or is he more of a social entrepreneur, that cares more about impact than money? Etc.

Back to my example on Digital Transformation, for good decision-making on a DT initiative (which outcomes to prioritise, where to invest, which service provider to take, etc), it's important to make distinctions between Digital Transformation, Digitization and Digitalization, 3 terms that are commonly used as vocabulary of DT.

Here is how we distinguish those 3 terms in my company:

• Digitization is the process of automating and improving existing processes and ways of working, making them more efficient (e.g. investing in a CRM to better manage customers)
• Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change the business model of an organisation, to create new values and revenue streams (e.g. selling your products online using an e-commerce and digital payment platform)
• Digital Transformation is really about the fundamental change in the leadership, culture, mindset and ways of doing things of an organisation, with digital and the customer at the core (e.g. cross-functional teams co-creating new digital products for and with customers, and launching new updates based on users' feedback every few weeks). This includes the personal transformational journey of the leaders and their teams themselves.

Indeed, 3 very distinct terms, with 3 very different sets of outcomes! So, it would really make sense going forward to always ask any company engaging in "Digital Transformation", or any "Digital Transformation" service provider, to clarify which of the 3 terms they are referring too, or at least to align on expected outcomes, right?

I hope, at least, that this article helps clarify a bit ;)

To end on this, I strongly encourage you not to take the above for granted, but build your own understanding and make your own distinctions of those Digital Transformation terms- this is the best way for you to be able to challenge any jargon on this super important business topic going forward!

And to always keep the learning going...

Natacha EMILIEN

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PS, as I also often hear people using the terms "Digital Marketing" and "Digital Transformation" interchangeably: for me, Digital Marketing can be a Digitization initiative (if we are only digitizing our existing communication to customers via emailing or social media ads for example) or a Digitalization initiative (if we are creating a whole new way of engaging with and generating value for customers through digital communities for example). Digital Marketing is not a Digital Transformation initiative if the organisation doesn't transform fundamentally.

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Additional food for thought:

• Blog post written by my co-founder Alam Kasenally in 2018, that better explains how we at Red Dot make the distinction between Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation: https://blog.reddot.mu/2018/10/08/digitaltransformation/
• https://hbr.org/2021/03/digitizing-isnt-the-same-as-digital-transformation
• https://thefinancialbrand.com/97749/future-digital-banking-transformation-covid-disruption/