A Doer’s World of Digital Transformation - What it takes to deliver to Live.

Throughout my career, I have focussed on building digital solutions for business problems. To realize a dream, takes passion, perseverance, and determination. I have observed that attitude is more valuable than skills and upskilling is more important than experience.

Today, I feel happy that I have ideated, conceptualized, and rolled out large programs and developed best-in-industry open-source products. I have always focused on building strong domain understanding, and technical know-how. This has helped me deliver customer-centric and outcome-focused solutions while working with diverse teams. I have failed, but neither quit, nor took rest!?

I personally feel there are eight key tenets for success -?

1. Leadership and the core team
2. Clear vision and structured approach?
3. Core engine, the doer team?
4. Technology & Technical Architecture, Scalability
5. The evolvement of Products in line with market trends
6. Time is critical, so is Patience!
7. Focus & take time-critical decisions
8. The way we go live

Leadership and the core team

Leadership needs boldness and a growth mindset. The leaders need to muscle into the ecosystem with a team that can spread the same energy. As the world transformed over time, I have observed few leadership traits that have brought in transformational gains -

1. Being the change agent. Believe that change starts with you.
2. Vision and clarity with respect to how the vision translates into smaller milestones and how to achieve them.
3. Never fears failure and understands ground realities.
4. A strong business and technical understanding with clarity of big picture view.
5. A leader who is always happy to hear feedback.
6. Believe in employee centricity and talent upskilling.
7. Identifying the right people, empower them for success, and NOT POKING.

?Clear vision and structured approach

It all starts with a clarity of vision and strategy to deliver the desired outcome. It is important that that the team understands ground reality. Digital Transformation is a journey. The team that works out a strategy should work closely with the team that’s executing it.

The front runners should comprehend this vision with utmost clarity and believe in the underlying technology, handling the people deeply involved in the transformation journey. People management indeed is one of the toughest skillsets and one whom masters lead the race! The front runner should also have a view of how the plan will be formalized and be part of the journey day in and day out. With that base, the plan has to be vetted by the technical and operational teams to ensure feasibility. ?

They can’t be just waiting at the destination expecting a coal engine transformed into a bullet train to arrive!!!!?

Core engine, the doer team & doer's leadership

?A strong and relentless team of believers, doers, and learners, dedicated to the core should take this transformation journey forward, through the rough terrains. They have to stand like a stonewall against naysayers who resist change. The leadership should be bold to keep the doers motivated to sail forward. The leader should be part of the team knowing what the story on the ground is.

I believe, the world needs dreamers and doers; more so, dreamers who are doers too.?

Technology & Technical Architecture, Scalability

There’s no dearth of people underestimating the power of technology in solving business problems. Many people openly opine that technology is not that relevant. We also have another set of people who think "let it work functionally and then we will fix the scalability aspects later". ?

I strongly believe functional compliance and non-functional abilities are two sides of the same coin. The solution has to be built with a tech-at-heart mindset.

What many miss is the fact that for solutions to work at scale, the underlying technology cannot be fragile and short-sighted. Many myopic technology geeks tend to rush through the solution, push to production and then keep fixing it burning the midnight oil.

It is important to understand that functional, as well as non-functional requirements, are equally critical when it comes to a technical solution for transformation. Scalability has been one of the major challenges that have failed many transformations. Unless the coding, testing and deployment strategies are solid, you won’t be able to cut through the ice. Trying to fix grave performance issues during production will never help build a solid solution.

We should always consider the worst-case scenarios and build solutions that can work even in those cases. If the solution can work on a normal day with zero manual touches, that is superb! BUT, making it encounter the worst situations and still run efficiently is what makes it stand out.

The evolvement of Products in line with market trends

Many engagements fall apart because the mind of the business has taken a different direction due to reasons such as changes in the business models or the people involved. We need equal focus on technology and customer requirements, especially how they believe the business process will shape up in the future, to make a winning solution.

The real understanding of how the business is going to behave will be the most critical pillar for the success of transformation.

Time is critical, so is Patience!

The senior leadership should showcase patience and trust in the team to complete this journey. What has remained unfixed in 20 years cannot be expected to get fixed in 3-6 months. Leadership should invest in thinkers and doers; it will help the organization largely.

Leadership should not be afraid of failures, They should stay persistent, ready to embrace many bad news against that ONE good news. It's a burden on their paychecks too.

Focus & take time-critical decisions

The doers’ leader must trust to make quick decisions without fear of failure. That requires a lot of confidence and determination almost every day to get the building blocks right. The leader should say "NO" fearlessly to derailers and the so-called thought leaders who have no clue on what is the reality on the ground. ?

You might find me cynical here, as it is the doers' leader who decides how and when the rubber should hit the road!!!

The way we go live

Typically, when programmes go live without any hassles, it is hardly recognized and rewarded. People often tend to consider it as just another program. At the same time, if a program gives sleepless nights to the leaders before it’s resolved and goes live, it is celebrated big time.

Isn’t that an irony?

While the former deserves the glory rightfully, the latter gets it.

? How all of the above ties up together

Connecting the users, strategy, leaders, and doers is the toughest puzzle. They all need to work like a well-oiled mill.

I believe here the focus should be towards building a strong, people-centric leadership that will ensure the team’s well-being in a highly stressful game plan. Everyone says it is a people’s game but finding the right person for the right role is the most important part and it involves many factors. ?Every project comes with its own challenges, revving the adrenaline gush.

As I had mentioned earlier, my views are more focused on the doers. In today’s digital world, the transformation at scale would be led by the doer, the leaders with a growth mindset, the leaders who believe in teams, and the leaders who have the vision and the ability to break down the vision into achievable milestones.

I will sum up with a line –

The differentiator is "The Digital Transformation" and Success is the thought leadership in defining the approach & execution.?

A thinker’s thought can be well put in a PPT. But unless you have the doers to make it a reality, you’ll just have to stay happy with multiple versions of your PPTs.?

These thoughts are personal. Please write to me if you have any queries.?