Leaping the “Digital Chasm”

“The launch took place at the south rim of the Snake River Canyon, west of Shoshone Falls (42.597°N 114.423°W), on September 8, 1974, at 3:36 p.m. MDT. The steam that powered the engine was superheated to a temperature of 500 °F (260 °C). The drogue parachute prematurely deployed as the Skycycle left the launching rail and induced significant drag. Even though the craft made it all the way across the canyon to the north rim, the prevailing northwest winds caused it to drift back into the canyon. By the time it hit the bottom of the canyon, it landed only a few feet from the water on the same side of the canyon from which it had been launched. If he had landed in the water, by his own admission, Knievel likely would have drowned, due to a jumpsuit/harness malfunction which kept him strapped in the vehicle. As it was, he survived the failed jump with only minor physical injuries.” - Wikipedia

Like so many company digital transformations, initiatives, programs, or “you name the effort,” the Evil Knievel Snake River jump had incredibly high aspirations, a competent team, a leader strapped in for the ride, overwhelming public declarations (though no Powerpoints ??), and the latest in technologies. In the end, Knievel’s jump ended like many Digital Transformations, only a few steps ahead of where it started, goals not achieved, and a few bruised egos.

Leaping the Digital Chasm (thanks to Emmet Keeffe, Insight Venture Partners for coining the term) only happens through hard work: exceptional leadership, disciplined focus on driving adoption/value, and organization change up & down the business. Despite the reality that companies are now fully operating in a Post Digital World (it’s no longer whether you need to go digital, but whether you’ll go successfully or be disrupted), adversity to risk of going digital and poor execution continues to stand in the way.

The Digitization and specifically Analytics/AI opportunity in front of companies is like the Internet Opportunity of the early 2000’s. There were many leaders who thought the Internet was a fad and we’re simply hoping it went away! There were also other leaders (and investors) full of irrational exuberance on the opportunity. As with the early Internet; knowledge is power, and timing is everything. Analytics/AI will make totally new business models possible. Play to win!

Though risk still involved (by all means, don’t look to strap yourself into a rocket bike), you can greatly increase success by focusing on these strategic imperatives, the right partners for the journey, and learning from years of leaping these chasms (without too many bruises myself).

1.    Exceptional Leaders Needed! All break-through business or technology transformations start and succeed with exceptional leaders. Exceptional leaders consistently bring:

• Vision and clear strategy – people believe in their strategy and what they are trying to achieve,
• Passion – individuals believe in them and believe they have their best interest in mind! They will run through the wall with them,
• Discipline – they bring rigor, detail focus, and always keep execution / delivery at the forefront.

Leaders are not born; they are developed over time through experiences. Whether you’re the leader or trying to develop/coach the leader, some good insights:

• Leaders don’t need to get all the glory. The best strategies are backed into through socializing key ideas. Great leaders make it their boss, team, or company’s strategy; “Speed comes when you convince them it’s their idea.” – Sandeep Dadlani, one of the best leaders I’ve encountered for digital transformation!

Get clear on the funding. Too many efforts allocate capital based on entitlement (especially in large corporations with lots of leaders).  Focus the investments on value delivery and be ruthless on contingency and other funding buckets. Your CFO will respect this and become a strong ally.

Think big but sell one bottle at a time. Deliver fast pilots and break up efforts to deliver value along the way. Force the pace and value (never lose sight of what creates the value).

Create strategic partnerships with outside companies and leverage their leadership experience. Their experience across multiple companies and industries is invaluable. Fractal Analytics, one of the disruptive innovators in the AI domain, is working across Insurance, CPG, Apparel, Retail, Financials, and more. That’s the type of expertise you want to bring into your efforts.

2.    Disciplined Value Focus and Business Transformation Execution - Don’t be confused on the difference between good efforts and good results. Focus on the total transformation of the business model or process with value / adoption at the core.

• As you think of User Experience, think beyond the functional benefits to the emotional benefits for the user. Let me provide a simple product example from my P&G days. Pampers diapers have numerous functional benefits (absorption, no leakage, tabs that stay closed, etc.). However, we also marketed the emotional benefits: your baby will sleep through the night – great for new mom and dad and critical for the development of the baby! Think about the emotional benefits of what you’re driving and how that can help with adoption. *** Make sure you’re working with partners that can bring true UX expertise to the efforts. Check out Lingaro’s mastery in this domain!
•  Often efforts leverage heavy customization to simplify solutions too complex for infrequent or poorly trained users. However, with solutions like WalkMe (making the complex easy) to GoogleMap users through systems or Tricentis RPA to create highly resilient automation of common tasks, transformations can move fast with out-of-the-box (lower cost and faster implementation). Just as with consumer facing transformations, in the end, it’s all about eliminating friction for users.

3.    Accelerators & Challenges to Organization Change (up and down) – Getting the organization, from senior leadership / through the frozen middle / to those delivering the day-to-day, championing the transformation is critical. Often the great challenge is moving people from “Playing not to lose” to actually “Playing to win!”

Some accelerators that can help your journey:

• Make sure you’re working on a problem your stakeholders want solved! Market Timing – when “your market” internal or external decides “that” problem needs to be solved – is critical to getting momentum. This does not mean your customers can articulate the answer, just that they agree the problem is worth solving.
• Find ways to make it real for consumers and leaders. In addition to some of the areas talked previously, e.g., emotional benefits, a technique that has worked well is creating the “Day in the Life” if we had “this capability” in place. Make it a real experience they can feel.
• Create break-through partnership models with external thought leaders. At P&G, we identified and created break-through models with Verix, RapidMiner, Signals Analytics, Digimarc, IIA, and others to accelerate change.
• Document a strategy – Slow down to go faster: the rigor of a strategy brings more speed, not less. There are numerous ways to capture your strategy in a compelling model for sharing. Check out some of my other articles on the P&G Analytics Transformation, Innovation Briefs, and InnovationNet. Creating a compelling strategy that the organization can get behind is critical!

Bottom line, “play to win” on your transformation! 

- AJW