The Wheel Of Digital Transformation

What to do and how to do it

Actionable blogs, insightful blogs, blogs that demystify and develop business’ understanding of Digital Transformation and Leadership. That’s the challenge the AD2 team set me for 2016.

So last week, I set things in motion by sharing our Definitions of Digital Transformation, what they were and how to recognize them.

This week, it’s time for action. I want to share with you our practical guide to taking those first and so important steps in your own Digital Business Transformation so that you can do it effectively.  But first, a couple of things to point out before I hurl myself into a bullet point list of ‘do this’ and ‘do that’s’:

REMINDER: Digital Business Transformation is a wheel. It’s not a line. There is no end point or final destination. There is only constant modernisation.

When you start a Digital Business Transformation initiative you need to bring clarity to the strategies you pursue and to the discussions you have with key stakeholders.   This is essential.

The leadership team and the wider workforce must understand that success is going to be about changing everything inside out and becoming focussed on constant modernisation.

This is an important point to make as we move through yet another phase of the Industrial Revolution or firmly ensconce ourselves in the Second Machine Age.

REMINDER: Things don’t happen just once. I’m serious – and really you know that. People change; they come and go, just like technology.

So whilst we are putting all our focus into changing technology for the good within the organisation, we might well miss the fact that two or three of the senior leadership team have left and all the good work we did to get their commitment and participation up front needs to be done again.

Scenario: You are building a digital strategy, you are new to a digital leadership role, you are part way through your strategy and want to do a gap analysis and check-in exercise to see how you’re doing…

What should you be looking at? Assessing? Measuring? Focussing on?

Answer:  The Wheel of Digital Transformation. Here we go, let’s go round the wheel: 

1)    Know thy Self: Forget digital for a minute or three. Ask yourself: Where do we want to be? Where are we now? Can you answer these questions? If not, you need find those answers now.

Probably a workshop or series of workshops are needed. You need to bring the right group of people together (Leadership representation, Technology, Audience Knowledge, Workforce Knowledge, even a digital native), then thrash out these questions. Every business should do this. Once you know where you want to be you can assess where you are now against a realistic target or benchmark. Rather than using industry benchmarks and digital maturity audits, your most valuable and accurate benchmark is against an authentic and robust business vision and goal for your own organisation. We learnt this the hard way. So get onto it now!  This is the building block of Setting a Target.

2)    Convince the Elders: Leadership, commitment and participation. And it needs to be from the get-go. I know I sound like a broken record, but believe me full and active participation by the leadership team is essential.

You may be tempted to bypass the top table, and you may even find that there are things you can do at the start that don’t require their full commitment and participation but sooner or later things will get stuck, momentum will slow, money will dry up or not be enough.

So don’t just get them on board theoretically, get them involved practically! That’s the way to get leadership to buy into digital transformation. This is the building block of Momentum.  

3)    Know thy people: Who are your audiences? What do they think? What do they do? How do they behave? Assessing and asking your audiences to talk is key to building a strategy and transforming. Ditch the old ‘assumption’ rubbish and forget the lazy segmentation techniques that spend so much time grouping people into stereotypes they lose track of individualisation. One of the most powerful things the digital age has given us is the opportunity to get up close and personal with people. This is the building block of Culture and Change.

4)    Write your commandments: This is where people stumble and fall. If you are going to effect change across people, business, culture and communications (our Adapt2Digital cause and effect quadrants), you are going to need some rules that people sign up to, principles that people commit to, anchors that can be monitored and measured. 

We have the Six Principles of Modern Business & Leadership which we share with our customers; What will yours be? This is the building block of Strategy.

5)    Build & grow your people not your temple: I love the saying; "What got you here won’t get you to where you are going". This is so true in regard to skills and resources. "What got you here, won’t get you to where you are going" - love it. 

So, first recognise that your skills and resource landscape is in for a good shake up. And I mean shake it up good! It’s going to become more complex and you are going to have to rethink a few things, but the results are going to drive your transformation journey at pace. Some pointers:

• Don’t force a type of skill onto a person based on their job label. Base it on their competency, capability and willingness.

• Find out what skills you have beyond the job label. Finance Manager by day maybe super App developer by night!

• Loosen the shackles that bind you, them, us to full-time or long term commitments, think short term micro resourcing. Get what you want when you need it.

• Open up and free people to learn, on the job, off the job, on the way to the job…let it be known that learning is good.

• Put these four things together and you’ve got the ingredients to shake it up good!

6)    Last piece on the wheel of Digital Transformation is Engage and Monitor. I like this unlikely pair to be put together for a very good reason. When you give voice and visibility to the wider audiences of your Digital Business Transformation you have something really special happening, ideas become rich, feedback becomes more accurate and continuous, belief and advocacy in the journey is ripe; and voila! You have something to monitor alongside numbers and profit.  These are the building blocks of Outcome Based Reporting.

There you are, our simple but well seasoned Wheel of Digital Transformation. 

But remember, at any given moment you probably will be focussing on more than one area of the wheel and when you get round the wheel you will already have realised you need to head straight back to one of the other areas! That's the reality.

Last piece of advice from the field?  Don’t think you can cheat the transformation wheel.  You can’t. You can only kid yourself for a certain amount of time before it comes to bite you in the proverbial behind. You have to address everything on the Wheel of Digital Transformation.

The Different Faces of Digital Transformation

After my post last week about 'action not discussion' as a prediction and plea for Sweet ‘16, the team at Adapt2Digital have charged me with writing content which allows the reader to gain as much actionable and relevant knowledge to help them move forward either in Digital Transformation or Digital Leadership

“No problem!” I said. And so, this blog aims to provide a summary of the different definitions of Digital Transformation that seem to have evolved and be talked about today. To what actionable end? So that you can recognise which type of Digital Transformation you are either currently undergoing or thinking of kicking off. So you can recognise which type of Digital Transformation someone might be referring to in conversation and consequently ensure the context is correct.

Somewhat akin to separating the goats from the sheep, or rather searching for the diamond in a coal bunker, the term Digital Transformation has become synonymous with single business area digital transformations, single project focus points, or worse, simply the procurement and deployment of a new piece of technology.

So, how many different types of Digital Transformation are there? Which one applies to you? And which one is the best? The following lists the types that tend to be referred to in the market currently, but without distinction.

1)    Digital Marketing Transformation

Positive

• Raising the importance of the customer and the voice of the customer.

• Bringing the value of engagement through social media and real-time capability to the fore as well as the need to be ready to pick up (and drop) new channels quickly and effectively to maintain relevance in the eyes of the customer.

• Raising the game in regard to data and how connected data and allowing continuous engagement with customers can create richer experiences with together also contribute to more superior product or service design.

Cautions

• It potentially stays as a front end transformation and, without gaining the right visibility and endorsement across the wider business, further transformation may get stuck here forever.

• This type can give rise to the adoption of technologies that may fall outside the visibility of the wider business. For example, the use of a new social media monitoring tool by the marketing or communications team could have far more value if integrated with other technologies or data within the business.

2)    Technology Digital Transformation

Positive

• Gaining access to agile ways of working, using new technologies and connecting with suppliers that can provide the art of the possible.

• Enabling innovation through joining the dots across the audience value chain (that can be a customer, employee, supplier, partner even stakeholder)

• Building speed into the business from an operational perspective to meet demand and differentiate.

Cautions

• Without paying equal attention to culture and communication together with process and the technical fundamentals of deployment, usage and maintenance; this type of transformation can lose momentum and fail in achieving goals and objectives. For example; Using an new internal social platform like Yammer might go 100% smoothly in regard to process and deployment but without understanding the culture of the workforce and communicating the ‘why’ benefits success might be short lived.

• The positioning of technology, especially technology teams within the organisation is of major importance. That the business perceives technology as a provider of solutions to its needs is vital. Equally important is the mindset and behaviour within the technology area itself, to actively go out to the business and seek to provide the business solutions rather than being told ‘I want this technology please.’

3)    Product/Service Focussed Digital Transformation

Positive

• Often one of the most resistant areas of business open to change due to fear of revenue/profit decline, customer loyalty etc. Equally, this is often one of the most celebrated examples of Digital Transformation - how a business transformed by redesigning their product or service to better suite their customers. When product and service goes through Digital Transformation amazing value and opportunity can by realised through adopting a redesign mindset. This can, quite literally, be transformational!

• This type of transformation often delivers one of the most valuable elements of the wider Digital Business Transformation if focus, investment and commitment is placed on customer experience mapping. The value of this is connectivity of the customer journey across all touchpoints, which means the business starts to get visibility and naturally integrate with other teams and business areas to better serve customers.

Cautions

• Can become a one-trick pony. Transform a product or service and then you think it’s done! Without adopting an adaptive mindset, embedding adaptive processes this is not a good route.

• Digital Transformations in this area can become more of a channel shift rather than a full redesign, if there isn’t enough commitment and leadership to drive the transformation.

4)    Digital Business Transformation

Positive

• Carrying out a Digital Business Transformation means, by definition that everyone and everything is involved and thus the overall benefits become far greater than the transformations mentioned above.

Something Beautiful

• A complete transformation of your business from a 20th century organisation to a 21st century organisation serving a 21st century audience! Please note I say audience not just customer. Digital Business Transformation places a focus on each audience within it’s ecosystem: customer, workforce, supplier, partner, stakeholder and increasingly the wider community.

Clearly, for Digital Transformation to be truly sustainable and adaptive, it must be a Digital Business Transformation and that requires an inside-out focus, a commitment toward redesign far beyond a product or service, a commitment and participation by the entire leadership team and be fully inclusive of all audiences within the business ecosystem.

Any business that wants to serve a 21st century audience should, ultimately, have its eye on Number 4 above.

This is not to say the other types of Digital Transformation are without merit, quite the contrary, they can be significant starting points from which a wider business transformation can grow, and often one will effect the beginning of another. In this instance they would most probably become strategic projects or initiatives under the umbrella term Digital Business Transformation movement.

Summary

1)    Recognise which type of Digital Transformation your organisation is currently undergoing or talking about and if it falls within No. 1, 2 or 3 ensure your leadership team know this is only the start of something bigger. Do not dilute the imperative of the wider Digital Business Transformation but use your learnings, your successes as the business case to widen your efforts. 

2)    Think about how you can start to bring other areas of the business along the Digital Transformation Gravy Train – Data, Workforce Engagement, Customer Services…think, be open, share, collaborate, ditch ego and all sense of ownership and get out there!

3)    If you are undergoing Digital Business Transformation make sure you make it real for everyone: from the very top of the business to the very bottom. Everyone must be involved and and have a voice in mapping the journey from a place of contribution rather than a place of being force fed.

4)    Spend time, more time and then some more time, in getting a majority understanding and a solid level of authentic commitment to active participation from the leadership team.

Regardless of which type of Digital Transformation you are journeying towards or journeying through, make sure you are totally aware of your starting point. Ensure any targets are based on an audience benefit and business outcome and not just profit margin or savings quota.

So, one down!  I’m thinking of sharing our Wheel of Digital Transformation as my next actionable blog. Sharing with you the steps we take businesses through to help implement realistic and effective Digital Business Transformation. Sound good!? Please do let me know.