One Pandemic does not a Digital Organisation make
There are many claims being bandied about at the moment along the lines of
Covid-19 has forced us to become a Digital Organisation
This reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of what a Digital Organisation is and more importantly, why organisations need to make this transformation.
Most people at most organisations don't understand what it means to be Digital. I would include in that some people that are responsible for Digital transformations! Many people still think the scope is limited to the Technology or Product departments and it can be achieved with technology changes alone.
Covid-19 has undoubtedly forced massive changes on many organisations to allow them to continue to operate anywhere near efficiently, and I take my hat off to all of those involved in these initiatives.
The vast majority of these initiatives have done exactly that, they have allowed their organisations to continue to operate, pretty much as before, but with remote teams. Some responsibility may have been delegated, workflows may have been automated, technology tools may have been implemented and many communications have become more structured. This has moved the needle and done so at a pace previously considered impossible or at best reckless.
The figure above shows a simplistic model of a Digital organisation. The heart of this is the customer. A Digital organisation has to be focussed on the customer, everything it does should be aimed at improving customer experience. The traditional organisation is inward looking, structured around making it operate as efficiently as possible. This is the complete opposite of the external, customer focus of a Digital organisation.
Becoming Digital involves re-inventing all aspects of an organisation. Structures, processes, hierarchies, governance and culture all have to be re-assessed, re-designed and re-implemented. The transformation should never be undertaken as a single step, but rather a series of, still quite considerable, changes that head towards being a customer-centric, Digital organisation.
Any organisation that has made this massive change as a reaction to the pandemic is brave at best, but more likely irresponsible!
The pandemic has been the single biggest disrupter to the business world, certainly in my lifetime. Many organisations have floundered, a few have flourished but the majority have hopefully done enough to survive. The smart ones will take heart from the ability to change quickly that they have demonstrated, and will kick-on from here, realising all of the value of becoming a Digital Organisation.
Software and Enterprise Architect, Thought Leader, Engineer, Computer Scientist
4 年Digital transformation drives effectiveness and tries to make companies more adaptable in these times of great change without sacrificing too much on efficiency, like Tom DeMarcosaid: “In addition to being flat-out hard to do, building effectiveness into an organization often comes into direct conflict with increasing efficiency. This is an unfortunate side effect of optimization, first noted by the geneticist R. A. Fisher, and now referred to as Fisher’s fundamental theorem: “The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change.” Fisher’s example was the giraffe. It is highly adapted to food found up among the tree branches, but so unadaptable to a new situation that it can not even pick up a peanut from the ground at the zoo. The more optimized an organism (organization) is, the more likely that the slack necessary to help it become more effective has been eliminated.”