People over technology; Preparing for a Positive Journey through Digital Transformation

“Think of digital transformation less as a technology project to be finished than as a state of perpetual agility, always ready to evolve for whatever customers want next, and you’ll be pointed down the right path.” — Amit Zavery, VP and Head of Platform, Google Cloud?

“The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines, and in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.” — Peter Drucker, American-Austrian author, educator, and consultant

The term ‘digital transformation’ has been defined in many ways, especially centered on the technology leveraged. Personally, instead of focusing on the tools in the toolbox, I choose to adopt a people-centric view of ‘digital transformation’, which to me, is a means to innovation: fundamentally changing the operational layer of a business and optimizing it for customer and employee experiences.?

From this viewpoint, digital transformation is driven from the shift of effort closer to the delivery of value, be that the customer, employee, or communities being served.

Essentially, digital transformation seeks to generate efficiency so that effort can be redeployed to increase the value delivered as product or service. It reduces the friction at all interactions through that flow.

This optimization impacts productivity, business performance and the customer journey in a number of positive ways. When done correctly, transformation is observed in the core fabric of an organization and the speed at which they can respond to customer needs.?

Creating new experiences for customers

Transformation requires a shift in mindset; one which asks technology leaders and business leaders to transverse the business technology divide and meld the often distinct faucets of an organization into a single, driving force of change. Once this barrier is removed you can rethink everything behind the scenes to simplify and automate core business processes.

However, there is a lot more to it than just automation. I am currently working with clients whose transformation is about removing barriers in their organization that will improve their customer experience. This involves implementing new ways of working while creating new programmatic interfaces for generalized tasks, as well as core capabilities.

This is an early phase of digital transformation. However, it is often bypassed, creating more conflict as the organizational immune system reacts to broader sweeping changes without preparation.

Changing mindsets is key

As with any change, the most significant risk to massive transformation is our own human minds and willingness to change. We are all more comfortable with what we know. It’s understandable and stems from a base human familiarity bias: we are often afraid or anxious about the unknown, or of what seems far off in the distance.?

Accepting this reality and working to help influence and expose people to new opportunities in a psychologically safe way is key for adoption.

Some ways to create safety and assist with adoption is to create opportunities for open, decent input and vision co-creation, that people can unify around. Once a common view of a potential future is established, it provides a safe place for experimentation and training. This then enables a natural curiosity to build for the masses. Finally, the peers of those who are lagging bring them along for the journey.

Organizational resistance must be overcome

Outside of the biases of the human mind, a core challenge is that of the organization’s history and legacy. They can be held back by a resistance to letting go of existing governance frameworks and processes which have served them well and protected them from the ups and downs of the past decades.

This anchor to the past can slow down transformation and often quell it. Organizations tend to serve the governance process or framework instead of seeking to understand the reason the framework was established initially: this creates unhealthy friction in the transformation process as the owners of the processes fight the owners of the transformation.

Alternatively, the framework owners might be key contributors of the future, helping to avoid the errors of the past which were codified in governance.

Being open individually or organizationally to new solutions is vital for success in any transformation and everyone needs to be on board.

Combatting the hidden cost of digitalization

Digitization comes with hidden costs which often are not considered until after the damage has been done. These costs can be summarized in two buckets:

People:

With massive transformation and the urge to get to the end state, people are often left behind. This often goes unnoticed with early retirements, departures, and dropping performance.

To avoid leaving people behind, it is critical to empower leaders with the ability to invest heavily in training, coaching, and mentoring throughout the phases of any transformation. This investment will result in a much more resilient and self-supporting organization.

Technology:?

With technology playing a significant role in any transformation, it can be seen as the outcome or goal being achieved and responsible for every increasing financial and operational cost on the organization.

To avoid this unintended consequence, we need to measure each technology decision end-to-end against the value that is being generated. We have to be ruthless in simplification of technology that is generating value regardless of past investment. With any system, if careful attention and pressure isn’t maintained, entropy will result.?

The pace of transformation

Digital transformation is continuing at an ever-increasing pace. It is critical to identify the guardrails that are most critical for the company’s protection and ability to continue to serve customers.

Starting from a place of strength and empowerment of the organization will create an ability to respond to the rapidly changing customer demands and allow for a sustainable approach to transformation.