Transforming into 2020

Q: What will happen next month? A: How do I know? I haven't got 20:20 vision! ;-)

The UKI market is currently moving slow with modest growth predictions of around 1% for next year as well. I've seen lots of decisions being put on the shelf as the general uncertainty being faced is causing paralysis, and general performance issues in many companies has clearly created complexity in making decisions on investments and capital expenditure. However, moving out of 2019 I am seeing some optimism. Some senior executives are fighting for survival, and they need growth strategies and mindset changes across their business. Or frankly because they have simply had enough of being suppressed and want to move forward in a much more positive way hereon. Whatever the motivations, there continue to be huge drivers behind transformative change, which are also continuing to bring fundamental changes to the way businesses identify and create value.

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So, here's some of the (not particularly surprising) high-level themes that I think will dominate the transformation agenda in 2020:

Businesses will continue to seek greater agility

This is not about agile as a project management methodology! The myth or unfulfilled promise of true or pure agile working at scale is giving way to a more productive focus on greater agility - "How can we identify and respond to opportunities faster?".

Yes, of course this means all sorts of agile methods and approaches are used, as you'd expect, but these are adapted to work well and evolved over time, and not simply enforced as a pure practice and approach from day one. Equally, accepting and working with and through the other supporting organisations, partners and the broader needs of larger companies.

Organisations will therefore invest more time in '20 establishing new working models and evolutionary paths forward from here. Working in tune with and developing their own organisational maturity, bringing different parts of the business together (genuinely) and facing the fact that finance, regulation, security, testing, operational resilience etc. will all need to play a part in developing and delivering new value.

Sustainable won't be an option

I am starting to see lots of progress from the commercial world in developing their businesses to genuinely play a part in sustainable futures. And I hope you are also seeing the same. This increased focus is also in recognition that being more sustainable is good for business with the rise of the ethical and sustainability focused consumer. This is also important in the war on talent as people seek to work for businesses with this focus as well. This combined with people continuing to look to their employers (with trust) to do the right thing, with the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer revealing that trust has changed profoundly in the past year. This is now firmly a boardroom issue, and a topic that comes up in every transformation strategy that I see. Much more strategic direction and goals on sustainable futures will start to come through in '20, and I can't wait to help make some of these become real for us, clients, their customers and their people.

"Wall-street" digital is dead

Lip-service digital agendas and strategies that appeared to have been largely designed to promote perceptual value have seemingly dominated a lot of corporations approach to "transformation", and they finally appear to be dying off. Moving us away from an era of mostly entertaining ourselves and having fun (through the "internet") into making more meaningful changes in the value we create. Over the coming years we will start to see even more rapid changes in how we produce food, keep well, keep safe, exchange value & data and operate our lives. Businesses will start to see the potential to deepen their relationship with their customers by providing services that extend far beyond the current role they have in their customers lives (e.g. reinventing farming). With most transformation strategies across industries showing a similar direction, looking to use their knowledge of a customer, enhance this and provide new services in an ever increasingly relevant context. This will be underpinned by continued developments in data, IoT, connectivity (5G), Cloud, Engineering and large platforms for intelligent orchestration and product creation.

New technologies will remain a distraction

Put AI across my blockchain services so I can extract more insight from my IoT sensors and push it all into the cloud.

Sure, can I ask why?

We will continue to see some companies and people obsess over tech, and approach things tech first. And to a degree I can sort of understand where this comes from, after all, new digital technologies will probably be in the answer somewhere. However, the most successful companies will continue focus on the human and the value that can be created. This will typically drive better decisions about how technology can enable the value anyway. Unfortunately this still won't be the dominant approach and I think many will continue to be distracted by all this new tech next year as well, but increasingly less so - I hope!

Data will be even more of a focus

AI, RPA, ML (and lots of other acronyms) will all continue to dominate the headlines, as they will drive huge amounts of change. However, I think there's also been an increasing move back to focusing on data as well. And that data has to be seen as a perishable asset and it is in everything, and if the data is bad or you don't have permission to use it etc. then it doesn't matter how clever the machine can be! So, we will see more of a focus on data, data as architecture, data acquisition, data partnerships, democratising data and data strategies and so on.

Consolidation will continue

I covered this earlier in the year. Raising the question: Will everything converge in the end - even humans and the machine are fusing? As the dominant growth businesses in the world today continue to drive forward, can we stop them from taking it all? The article didn't answer the question, but I still predict the ever more aggressive ecosystem drivers will continue to eat everyone's lunch and move up and down the value-chains with ever increasing greed. What will stop them?

Brand is back!

Maybe it never went away, but I think it has been MIA in lots of "digital" strategies and transformative plans. And I think we are seeing a resurgence of brand in this context, and not just as a marketing asset. It is something that can root experiences, drive the direction of innovation and define the deeper role businesses can play. If I look at the TSB brand, for example, driven by my friend and multiple times client Pete Markey and his team. Despite some well documented headwind their stead fast commitment to their brand & marketing strategy (which is doing an awful lot of good in the world, whilst making the brand a very real part of what their business means and how it is experienced by customers) looks like it has kept the whole ship steady, and certainly limited the damage that could have been caused through reported IT failure. And having had multiple conversations on brand with Dean Corney and others recently, this is certainly a topic that's is coming back into force in the experience and product & service design space. I think we need to see brand coming back into focus across all types of change in '20, it will help make a lot more differentiation strategies much clearer and I think drive lots of other transformation strategies by having a much clearer North Star. Here's hoping!

What's in it for me?

The majority of transformation will continue to fail. Gulp! In my experience, this is down to a range of reasons, including 'old' approaches to transformation that are still in force. Firstly, transformation as a single blob of change, taking years before it drops into the world like a nose diving bird of prey - gobbling up all of its intended opportunity - yeah right! Instead this needs to be broken up into clear value objectives (I call them value products) and the business evolved to its new and transformed state - which actually should just be one of continuous change anyway! However, there is good news. I see companies like our partners Freeformers helping change management approaches get a hold of the fact that transformation success is also driven by people changing and through people to people networks of "Champions". And not just changing their skillset or understanding of the change, but also their mindset (What's in it for me? Oh, brilliant, a future job I might like!) and importantly the behaviour change needed to be successful. Next year we see a lot more focus on people change!

Diversity is better for everyone

Diversity is a necessity. It's simply the right thing that we live and operate in an accepting and inclusive society and work in companies that are the same. It has also been proven (like sustainability) to be good for business. As my friend and former colleague Lee Menzies-Pearson pointed out in the advertising industry recently.

Over the next year I hope we continue to make great strides in this area, and at the moment I see a lot of reason to be optimistic. In the tech sector more broadly we need to catch up fast though - I see real commitment across the entire landscape and it won't happen soon enough!

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There it is, some of my views on the themes and drivers I am expecting to see in transformational change over 2020. Nothing startlingly insightful, but it was therapeutic to spend 10 mins throwing some of them down. Feel free to share some of your own?