From Digital Transformation to Purpose Transformation

If we talk about the word disruption, companies that instantly come to mind are the Airbnbs, the Ubers, the Facebooks of the world. These are the companies that have defied and reinvented the way conventional industries work with their fast-paced, lean, agile and design driven mindsets. They set out to immerse in the lives of their users and uncovered insights, understood the jobs to be done, Added to the above, they empathized the pains and challenges and mapped entire users’ journeys with an aim of simplifying the complex and making the expensive cheap as @Clayton Christensen would define disruptive innovation smaller company with less resources challenges established incumbents.

Even the disruptors are disrupted

One of the digital disruptors, Airbnb’s CEO @Brian Chesky commented about the recent pandemic and what it did to their business, “it took us 12 years to build, and we lost almost everything in 6 weeks”. If this is the state of one of the most agile, design driven, lean startups that have became the benchmark not just for the startups but even for the large corporations to embark on agile transformations; imagine where other legacy businesses stand in navigating the COVID19 world. Other disruptors like Uber have also been severely impacted by the crisis. There are several bankruptcies that have been reported and the numbers are still increasing.

This quote by Vladimir Lenin beautifully encapsulates the current world: "There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen".

So what has happened in the past couple of months? We all must have seen this great illustration by @Marketoonist about COVID19 fast-tracking digital transformation pursuits in organizations. (if not, take a look)

How are organizations navigating the crises?

Leading with a purpose

Industry 4.0 is all about connecting & engaging, but before starting connecting the brand to your customers, you need to develop the emotional connections with your employees. The top leadership and the CEO should lead as a ‘Chief Empathy Officer’ to inspire the whole team to innovate for a common purpose, with a character that inspires creative confidence.

Businesses and the C Suites are having to re-imagine their business models. The board rooms need to go back to the drawing board and start afresh and ask the reason why they exist and do what they do. That means going through the vision of the founders and asking questions pertaining to how they can create value for their customers and stakeholders.

Jeff Bezos’ famous Day One philosophy is a reminder to the entire Amazon organization that the company should always be in Day One mode. The concept is that as a company grows so do the processes and more importance start to be given to the processes rather than the ‘outcomes’. The focus should always be on the customer with an agile decision-making of a startup. Day 1 keeps the organization in a continuous evolution mode, aware of the VUCA world around it, constantly transforming and reinventing with a growth mindset to changing trends. 

Driving the change

Change is never easy, but it is essential! We must push ourselves to think differently, or we will never get better. If companies do not keep reinventing themselves to suit the changing dynamics they will face the fate of the Kodaks or Nokias.

As a digital transformation expert, I see clearly how Artificial Intelligence and the 4th industrial revolution with big data is already impacting every single aspect of our lives. We need to keep pace with this development and take advantage of it on both our personal & business sides and; remembering that our real intelligence is what makes us human, and AI is just an extension of that coded in a machine box.

Transformations are hard, and digital ones are harder if you do not have the appropriate digital-savvy leaders in place to drive the transformation roadmap. The desired change or transformation goes beyond adopting a design thinking process or program or the growth of the organization. Rather it is about scaling excellence by identifying pockets of greatness in the organization and spreading them. It’s about ‘spreading a mindset that changes people’s behaviors’.

Successful transformation programs and efforts do not happen at one speed. Change and transformation require momentum and moderation at different points in the organizational journey that requires using centralization and decentralization at critical moments. For example, decentralization is a great way to get innovation and ideas, but it’s not a very good way to get the unity of effort. It is at the implementation point where you move from a more decentralized model to a centralized model. This is why leaders have to be emotionally intelligent and just intellectual brilliance or intelligence won’t wield the desired change.

Re-thinking the new normal

The digital revolution has caused a culture shift, COVID19 has caused a culture shock. Both have vastly changed the consumer's buying behavior which is why we need to rethink the entire customer journey, revisiting the value propositions, customer jobs to be done etc.

COVID19 has changed customer behaviors and entire customer journeys need to be remapped and reimagined. How can companies and brands navigate in the ‘New Normal’?

-         Get back on the research mode. Find new insights by understanding the customers, particularly as the pre COVID19 insights of customer behaviors have changed dramatically. The customers’ lives have also been disrupted like organizations. their lifestyles have changed 180 degrees with respect to working, getting groceries, work and home are getting fused, children are being homeschooled etc.

-         Time for rapid innovation by being agile with new offerings catering to rapidly changing customer needs

-         Get proactive and play offense by being bold

-         Prioritize health and safety.

-         Digital CX is pivotal going forward. We can see a major focus on low touch economy with the use of contactless and touchless technologies, mobile payments and the use of voice technology to avoid human contact. Businesses are Live Streaming to sell products or cars taking the physical retail showrooms to their customers’ homes by utilizing video calling or augmented reality allowing 360-degree view of products.

-         Door to Door(D2D) or Direct to Customer (D2C) with brands reaching their customers directly and not through any middlemen with their own apps, websites and other social channels.

Nevertheless, What is holding back digital transformation at your or "any" organization?

I would love to hear Your thoughts