The REAL Meaning of “Digital Transformation”
Howard Tiersky
WSJ Best Selling author & founder of QCard, a SaaS platform designed to empower professionals to showcase their expertise, grow their reach, and lead their markets.
Welcome to DX Weekly — a free newsletter to help you unleash the power of digital for your company. Subscribe here . Digital transformation is the antidote to any company becoming irrelevant, and each week, I’ll share new actionable information to help you and your organization succeed in the digital world.?
We Jumped on a Moving Train
In 2016, we rebranded our consulting firm as a Digital Transformation Agency, because we felt that digital transformation needed to be the #1 priority of every one of our clients.
Since then, the term “digital transformation” has skyrocketed in use, as shown in this Google Trends screenshot for the term.
Back when the term was less common, people would often ask me what I meant by “digital transformation.”? Interestingly, as the term has become more widely accepted, people ask me even more, what does it really mean—specifically??
What Does “Digital Transformation” Mean?
I’m going to give you an answer you might not have heard before, inspired by a quote from the late, great, Jack Welch, legendary CEO of General Electric.?
During Welch’s 20 year tenure as CEO at GE, its stock valuation grew nearly 30x (3000%). So the guy knew a thing or two.
In the 1980’s, long before the term Digital Transformation was coined, Welch said:
“When the speed of change on the outside exceeds the speed of change on the inside, the end is near.”
–Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric
Welch Summed Up Digital Transformation
Digital transformation, at its core, is about changing how your company operates and delivers value to the customer, in order to keep up with the rapidly changing world.?
If you fail to transform, (or to transform fast enough, as Welch warns,) the implications are dire. And in fact, we’ve seen dozens of companies and great brands fall by the wayside these last few years, because they failed to change fast enough to remain relevant.?
This hasn’t been because they didn’t put any focus into digital, but because they failed to understand the full scope of digital transformation.
The Fallacy of Digital Transformation: It’s Not About YOU
This is the fallacy of how most people define “digital transformation.” The term is often used in the context of a program at a specific company—sometimes it's upgrading the ERP platform, redoing an app, or even a holistic overhaul of your customer experience.?
While this all sounds good, “digital transformation” is about something much larger than your company. And in order to do it well at a given company, you need to look at the bigger picture.
Digital Transformation is a profound shift in the world and perhaps most importantly, a massive change in your customers.?
领英推荐
Digital is Reshaping Everything and Everyone
Digital has been evolving for decades. We’ve gone from DOS-based IBM PCs to graphical operating systems to the dawn of the commercial internet. But it’s only in the last 10-15 years that we have seen it truly transform the way people live their lives.
Look at almost any daily human activity. From shopping, to finances, to dating, research, finding a job, connecting with friends… these activities have become not just digitally enabled but digitally centric for the vast majority of your customers. And of course, the pandemic only accelerated that transition.
Today, studies show that 70% of people sleep with their smartphone on their nightstand, and nearly a third of subjects in one research study indicated that if forced to choose between their smartphone and their sex life, they’d opt for celibacy.
This kind of major change in lifestyle and values inevitably means that the brands consumers engage with need to change substantially to meet their new, updated needs.
You Must Start by Understanding “The Outside”
The first step in digital transformation is to truly and specifically understand how the world has changed, and how your customers’ expectations and needs have changed. Your curiosity should also extend to the other key players in your value chain, like employees, suppliers and distributors. They’ve all changed and continue to change in their own transformation journeys.
It’s one of the reasons for the current “Great Resignation.”? Many companies are out of step with the priorities, preferences, and values of their own employees.
It’s only when you have properly focused on the bigger picture of the transformation of both our society and your constituent that are you in a position to consider the “inner layer” of transformation, which is necessary to be sure you and your company are not only keeping up with the speed but also the direction of the transformation of the world.
Join Us!
In this newsletter, we’ll be covering the many facets of digital transformation. Things like how to truly understand your customers, inspire employees to generate & prioritize great ideas for transformation, effectively execute against ambitious transformation goals, and how to counter transformation’s #1 enemy: resistance to change.?
I've had the great privilege to work with scores of Fortune 1000 sized enterprises — companies like GE, NBC, Avis, Airbus, GM, Transamerica, AAA, Merrill Lynch, ADP — on their transformations over the last several decades.
This has given me a ringside seat to many efforts to transform (some successful and some unsuccessful), and my observations have shown me important patterns, and taught me what works and what doesn’t. And I’ll share all that knowledge (and more!) with you.
Obviously I can’t put everything about every topic in each article, so if you have questions, put them in the comments! I’d love to hear from you and discuss them further.?
Subscribe now to get updated when we release a new article each week, so you can be sure to see the topics we’re covering each. I can’t wait to share them with you!
Your Turn
What has been your experience with digital transformation and what do you think are the keys to success? Let us know in the comments!
The best comment on this article will receive a free copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance.
Howard Tiersky is the founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency where he works with leading brands on Digital Transformation.
Book Author - Digital Roadmap | Digital Transformation Architect
2 年Well said Howard Tiersky. Most organization totally forget that transformation is mainly related to Process + People and technology is just a means to achieve it. But everyone seems to be running after technology upgrade as part of the transformation.
Business Manager at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency
3 年Congratulations on launching the first newsletter for DX Weekly, Howard! This was such a good read. Digital transformation seems so simple, yet some businesses still fail to understand its importance. This would be a great crash course on digital transformation that companies can look into. Will be looking forward to the next newsletters!
Creating the brands that align organisations to new opportunities
3 年Great stuff as always Howard, but I still have an issue with the term "digital transformation. I fear it suggests the application of technology will make an existing business model relevant to the new economy, when the truth is, digitising an exiting model is frequently a case of accelerating in the wrong direction. In fact, and you suggest this yourself, transformation is far bigger than the tech. "Digital" only defines the nature of the technology and is only the facilitator. The "transformation" is about mind-set, business models, product development and creation. This is why I avoid the term "digital transformation" and use the "business transformation" instead.
CEO | Book Author, Global Goodwill Ambassador
3 年Howard Tiersky - I love your example with Jack Welch. It is oftentimes and always the personality of the CEO of a company which is decisive on all levels ... When he left GE in 2001 soon many top performers followed his example and moved to other companies. David Wee left in 2005 and is still full of praise today - see his book together with Handi Kurniavan "Great Advice". Jack's book he published with Suzy Welch (The Real-Life MBA) is great. I reviewed it for Johntext Madhya Pradesh. Everything speaks for quoting Jack Welch in your newsletter. Well done!