Why Your Digital Transformation is Not Working - #2) You Leave the Scene of the Crime!

Introduction:

Digital Transformation is turning out to be difficult if not impossible for most enterprise companies to achieve.

70% - 80% of digital transformation projects fail because of one of these three reasons

Reason 1) The digital technology “does not work” as advertised and cannot be made to work.

Reason 2) The digital technology “might work” but the deployment teams “leave the scene of the crime” before the technology is embraced by the end-users.

Reason 3) The digital technology “does work” but we underestimate the difficulty, time, organizational structure, commitment, and cost required to ensure a true digital transformation.

In the last article (see ref 1 below), we discussed in Reason 1 that the digital technology does not work for reasons which are “out of your control.” Mainly because there are critical gaps in the disruptive technology which cannot be resolved in a reasonable period of time if ever.

In this article, we will discuss Reason 2 for why digital transformation initiatives fail which are "completely within your control!"

Even though you have proven the disruptive technology gaps have been resolved, here is the second cause of failure:

• Your first deployments fail in the hands of real end-users because your Digital Transformation Team “leaves the scene of the crime” (the Production Pilot) before the technology is embraced by the end-users.

Definitions:

In this article, we will use the following digital transformation definitions:

Enterprise Digital Transformation:

• The use of new, digital technologies that often depend on new disruptive technologies like Cloud Computing, Smart Phones, Augmented Reality, Data Sciences, and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to solve business and operational problems within and across the enterprise. Accomplished through a multidisciplinary team of OT, IT, Production, and Business Process experts (aka your Digital Transformation Team).

OT-Team (Operational Technology):

• Our internal & 3rd party team of Operational Technology experts who possess domain and process knowledge plus knowledge of the disruptive technology applications required to solve the business or operational problem. 

IT-Team (Information Technology):

• Our internal & 3rd party team of Information Technology experts who deploy and support our computing infrastructure, networks and security, business, engineering and operational software applications.

Successful Production MVP (PMVP):

• A special form of Production Pilot that delivers the minimum viable (but usable) product to the first production user(s). This Production MVP delivers the value promised by previous demos, Proof of Concept (PoCs), and Pilots to such a degree that the production end-user(s) embrace this new technology, are using it regularly instead of their old process(es) and are willing to tell others about their success.

Reason 2 Explained: The digital technology “might work” but we still fail!

Achieving a successful base of users (where success is defined as a “Successful Production MVP - PMVP”) is much more difficult, time-consuming, and elusive than most enterprise digital transformation project leaders, sponsors, and enterprise executives realize.

However, it is essential to your digital transformation initiative to achieve a Successful PMVP (at least one) before wasting large sums of money establishing a heavy digital transformation organization and IT support infrastructure. Building up these organizations will be important after you have established a Successful PMVP, but not before.

• That is, it's best to keep your digital transformation organization lean while focusing your investments on those tasks that will assure you achieve a Successful Production MVP.

Not to have a truly successful set of early user(s), that are willing to tell others of their success, is the death knell of most startup companies as it will be to your digital transformation initiative. 

Securing a Successful Production MVP is the most difficult step in the digital transformation process. Unfortunately, many times this step is not accomplished before the Digital Transformation Team “Leaves the Scene of the Crime” and moves on to its next group of digital transformation victims.

These disruptive technology adoption difficulties are not new and are detailed by Geoffrey Moore in his excellent book “Crossing the Chasm” written in 1991 (ref 2).

Additionally, the importance of limiting your disruptive technology investments until you have established a Successful Production MVP are detailed in Moore’s more recent book “Zone to Win” written in 2015 (ref 3), which he calls the “Incubation Zone.”

Geoffrey Moore’s recommended technology adoption and sober investment behaviors are confounded by these additional internal (to your enterprise) cultural and organizational realities:

1. Early Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and Pilot projects are typically managed by your company’s OT-Visionaries (such as advanced manufacturing leaders) whose job it is to take risks and be “change agents.”

• Being the first to implement change in their organization, they expect to get a jump on other technology initiatives within the company and to use their success to propel their careers. 
• OT-Visionaries are prepared to live with deployment bugs, glitches, and workarounds so long as they can demonstrate that the technology appears to be working.

2. Unlike OT-Visionaries, practical production people manage real production processes and the changes to those processes. These “Production Pragmatists” try to avoid risks that translate into problems, costs, and production delays. They are the ones who must live with your digital transformation technology long after the hype and attention have disappeared. 

• Most of the time, your Production Pragmatists will “shelve” the digital transformation technology as soon as your OT-Visionary leaves the scene of the crime.
• Production Pragmatics do not want to debug somebody else’s practice or process and consider this a waste of their time and the company’s money.
• In general, Production Pragmatists do not trust OT-Visionaries (because of past promises not fulfilled) and they have not forgotten the last time they were victims of OT-Visionary promises. They must be convinced that your digital transformation team will stay around until the new digital transformation technology is embraced and they are achieving the value they were promised.

 3. IT-Teams working on digital transformation projects are many times borrowed or reassigned from legacy IT Support organizations and projects. They are not typically “commercial grade” software product developers who understand that a working product with a great user experience is essential for customer success.

• They are unlike external startup company employees, who will do anything and work any number of hours to make sure their first customers are successful and satisfied. Startup company people realize that their survival (and their next paycheck) depends on having satisfied customers.

 4. Historically, internal OT and IT-Teams were hired to deploy and support mostly “out of the box” technology with established production deployment patterns that can be copied. Deploying disruptive technology to accomplish digital transformation has few “proven to be successful” production deployment patterns to draw from. 

Similar to a small startup company, your digital transformation team must establish these patterns for themselves. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to get right, particularly when you are working to an overly optimistic schedule, and working only 8-hour shifts, will not get you there. 

• You must instill an “intrapreneurial esprit de corps” into your Digital Transformation Team, which must come from the top! Think “Start-up company work ethic” when you think of staffing (ref 4).

What is a Digital Transformation Executive to Do?

Just because you have ensured there are no more technological gaps or issues that are “out of your control” (Reason 1 for failure), does not mean that you will be successful with your digital transformation initiative.

The next major hurdle involves powerful organizational and cultural issues built up over time that stand in the way of accomplishing your first successful production deployments.

The three (3) important messages of this article are:

1.     Your Production Pragmatists (your customers) hold the keys to your digital transformation success. Not your OT-Visionaries, not your IT-Teams and not your digital transformation project people. If your Production Pragmatists are not satisfied... you lose!

 2.     At this stage, all of your digital transformation time and effort should be focused on doing whatever it takes (funding, resource, support) to ensure your first production users have embraced your disruptive technology. You need to achieve a Successful Production MVP.

 3.    If you “Leave the Scene of the Crime” before accomplishing a Production MVP, your digital transformation initiative is doomed. This includes prematurely announcing success before your first production users have embraced your digital technology or spending lots of your investment in digital transformation organization and support infrastructures.

The Way Forward:

Founders and principles within technology startup companies and their Venture Capital investors focus all of their time and resources to guarantee that their first customers are successful and so should you!

Enterprise digital transformation executives must do the same with their first production deployment(s). That is, ensuring you accomplish a Successful Production MVP.

You can improve your chances that this will happen by:

1.     Completely understanding the criteria for success from the Production Pragmatists' perspective. Formalize the definition of success for the Production MVP. While you can influence this definition to some degree, you must realize that your production users are king and if they are not satisfied…you fail.

2.     Make sure there is a complete understanding and agreement between your OT, IT, Digital Transformation, and Production teams on this definition of success. 

• This includes the willingness of your Production Pragmatists to talk about their deployment success when and if it occurs.

3.     If your production pragmatists do not embrace their new digital transformation technology at the end of the defined PMVP deployment schedule, it is mandatory that you clearly understand the true reasons behind their reluctance. 

• Deputize independent digital transformation experts (who are not emotionally tied to this digital transformation initiative) who can investigate and accurately report the true reason for their reluctance. It's typically more than you are being told by your Digital Transformation Team.

4.      If the reported deployment issues are within your control (that is, are not newly discovered technology gaps that you may have missed – more Reason 1 issues) then redouble your efforts and your investments in making these first production users successful. Listen to their concerns and quickly overcome them.

• Do not “Leave the Scene of the Crime”. If you do, your digital transformation initiative is doomed.

5.     Minimize your additional investments in a digital transformation organization and support teams until you have achieved a Successful Production MVP.  Reserve these unspent funds to “redouble” your efforts to ensure you have satisfied production users. 

• You will probably need these additional funds!

Not doing the things outlined above will negatively reinforce to your existing Production Pragmatists that sooner or later your digital transformation team will “Leave the Scene of the Crime” before delivering on their promises. Once again, leaving the Production Pragmatist as the victim.

In the next (and final) article on this topic “Why Your Digital Transformation is Actually Not Working,” I will outline what an enterprise and enterprise executives should do after they have accomplished a Successful production MVP. This last step, “what to do when the digital technology actually “does work” (Reason 3 above,) turns out to be the least risky of the three Reasons we are discussing.

====

Article References:

(ref 1) LinkedIn article by Chris Garcia (Aug 2020) “Why Your Digital Transformation …and cannot be made to work no matter how smart you are”

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-your-digital-transformation-actually-working-garcia

(ref 2) Wikipedia Geoffrey Moore “Crossing the Chasm”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

(ref 3) Geoffrey Moore “Zone to Win”:

https://www.zonetowin.com/

(ref 4) Gifford Pinchot The Intrapreneurs 10-Commandments

https://www.pinchot.com/2011/11/the-intrapreneurs-ten-commandments.html

====

About Chris Garcia:

I have been in the digital transformation business for most of my adult career. Having founded two (2) digital technology start-up companies focused on engineering and manufacturing automation in discrete part industries like Aero, Defense, Automotive, and Heavy Industry. These companies were funded and mentored by smart venture capitalists from which many of the observations and lessons learned in this article have come.

I have also helped lead Enterprise Digital Transformations initiatives at GE, HCL, Siemens, Dassault Systems, and Lockheed Martin.

Finally, I led Software Research, Development and DevOps for the world’s most popular 3D Computer Aided Design (3D CAD) Product called SolidWorks a Dassault Systems Company.

Your thoughts, comments, likes (dislikes) are welcome through my LinkedIn account or by email

www.dhirubhai.net/in/chrisgarciaMBAIIoT

[email protected]

Thank you for your interest…

Chris Garcia