Wide asleep in the Age of Digital

We live in an increasingly complex world, where the rate of change over time feels exponential. As we left 2022 behind and have emerged into 2023, we are seeing high levels of turbulence and instability across several different sectors. The current reality is leading to organisations having to make some tough calls which are impacting customers, employees and shareholders. In a lot of cases business and customer goals aren’t being achieved, and there have been swathes of redundancies impacting people across the globe. Now more than ever change is required. Organisations and their leaders need help to adapt to new challenges. Management guru W. Edwards Deming hit the nail on the head when he said, “it is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory” and how pertinent that guidance feels today.

In her 2002 book, Carlota Perez wrote about Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. In it she describes five technology led revolutions since the 18th century. Each revolution has an installation period where investments are made and there is a frenzy leading to a financial bubble. In each revolution the financial bubble bursts and this leads to recession and subsequently a tipping point into what Perez calls a “golden age” deployment period. This deployment period creates opportunity for those organisations that are setup to service the needs of customers who demand the benefits of the new technology.

In his book Sooner Safer Happier, Jon Smart opens with reference to Perez’s work. As you can see from the below image borrowed from SSH, which has been adapted from Perez’s original visual representation of the 5 technology led revolutions, each deployment period has a way of working that has evolved to suit the context. We are currently in the Age of Digital, and the way of working that has evolved suited to today’s context is Business Agility. Business Agility suits the current age because it enables organisations to deal with the highly complex and adaptive world we are in.

The problem for a lot of organisations is that they are setup with ways of working that are suited to a bygone age. They are trying to solve 21st century problems with 20th century management methods. The most obvious example is the abundance of organisations that rely on traditional project and programme management approaches. A few common example indicators of this are the use of Gantt charts and detailed project plans, sequential delivery, lack of customer interactions and suffering from organisational silos. The reason this is a problem is because these outdated methods do not cater for the complex and adaptive world we now live in. If organisations cannot adapt quickly enough, then how can they ever hope to satisfy their customers’ needs? If they can’t satisfy their customers’ needs, how can they ever hope to provide compelling value propositions for employees and shareholders? Most importantly, how do they hope to survive?

Organisations and shareholders have typically gained comfort in maintaining market share and profitability based on their scale and dominance within a market. The world has changed though, due to the technology led revolution of the Age of Digital. In bygone ages, the barriers to entry were often so great that it was too hard to challenge the big established organisations. But new organisations do not require the same level of startup costs. As an example take a couple of traditional barriers to entry; datacentres and office space which would typically cost huge amounts of money. Cloud and remote working have completely changed the landscape on those traditional barriers, where it has now become much easier for new entrants to the market. These new entrants are hungry, and they’re not weighed down by some of the things the big established organisations are like monolithic, on-premise architectures. The challengers are cloud native, digital ready and setup to operate with greater levels of business agility. Those unwilling to adapt are wide asleep in the Age of Digital.

The opportunities to capitalise as we emerge into the golden era of the Age of Digital are there for the taking, but only if organisations embrace agility. It is important that we recognise that agility is an outcome and it can be enabled by many different things depending on where that organisation is in its journey. We must respect that each organisation is uniquely complex and so there is no one size fits all approach. However, in my experience there are some no regrets things that I recommend we should all be exploring:

• Start with why you exist as an organisation.
• Understand your customers and their needs.
• Clarify the strategy which must be in service of your why.
• Organise people and resources to maximise valuable outcomes as they execute strategy.
• Ensure there is high alignment between strategy and execution.
• Enable people through great leadership, processes and tooling.
• Embrace change, don’t fight it. Learn early and then adapt based on new knowledge.

One of the things that gets in the way of organisations improving is that people don’t know what they don’t know. It can be helpful to learn from people who do, and can share experiences that will help progression. If my article resonates with you, then give a thumbs up and share with others. You can also drop me a message with any questions or if you think I can help with you and/or your organisation.