The future is digital, you know it is, and it's time you did something about it for you and the future of your company!

This is my first?LinkedIn?newsletter, I'm calling it the?"digital transformation CEO", after all, I'm a?CEO?of a digital company that helps others to become digital.?I'm going to pick monthly subjects to appeal to other CEOs or leadership teams to get them on track to be digital.

Before I start, it's worth saying that I know many, many IT companies have sold you a systems replacement and called it?digital transformation.?I'm sorry, but new?IT?systems don't make you digital.

Empowering your people to be digital and therefore have new digital?business models, makes you digital.?

My first newsletter, is an open question, "why if you know you should be digital why are you not doing anything about it?"

Or why do you think you are digital, when I can clearly see you are not, why is there such a difference in where your business is and other digital businesses are??

The future is digital, you know it is, it's time to do something about it!

I'm sure you've seen research from all the major management consultancies and It suppliers that the world has gone digital.?Covid-19?has accelerated this, you may have seen the research from?McKinsey?that showed we had 10 years of digital transformation change in the first three months of the Covid lock downs. (If not the article is called "the quickening" and is?here.)

Changes have happened in the past but they tended to be localised.?I recall, sitting at home during a lockdown and having calls with?India,?Europe, the?US?and?Australia?all in the same day.?The answer from all of those countries were the same.?Everything has moved online.

Fast forward to today, we've had the "great resignation" as many people either felt to scared to go back to work, decided there was a better life than computing to an office, or have just decided to sit it out until they retire.?The thing is, life changed for all of us.

The analog mental model

In?Peter M. Senge's book?"the fifth discipline"?he talks about "Mental Models".

A mental model is where a person has a "reality" in their head, this may have been shaped for years and nothing can change that model.

Let me quote a section from the book

"I will never forget visiting with a group of?Detroit?auto executives after their first factory visits to?Japan?over twenty years ago.?This was about the time that the US was waking up to the fact that Japan was steadily gaining market and profit share in their industry.

The Americans through this was because Japanese goods were "cheap" or they had protected markets.

After the tour of the Japanese car plant it was clear that the Detroit executives were unimpressed.?And one said, "They didn't show us real plants."?When Peter inquired as to what he meant by this, he responded?"There were no inventories in any of the plants. "I've been in manufacturing operations for almost thirty years and I can tell you those were not real plants.?They had clearly been staged for our tour."?

Today we all know that?they were indeed real plants, examples of the "Just-in-time"' inventory systems that the Japanese had been working on for many years?that dramatically reduced the need for in-process inventories throughout the manufacturing system. Within a few years these same US firms would be racing desperately to catch up."

It's the same with social and digital, company after company using outmoded processes and structures and they wonder why there is no pipeline.

One?Linkedin?post I saw read they were going to work the SDRs harder and harder, make them call more and pitch more. It was like listening to those Detroit auto executives.?

The business model has changed and so does your mental model.?

It reminds me of the quote

'The beatings will continue until morale improves'

We know the world has changed, we know that digital is intrinsically locked in the way we do business, we have to change our mental models for us to see digital as an opportunity and not a threat.?

We both know it's time for change and we we both know that the future winners and leaders will be those that stand up and be counted today!?