Recently I was participating in some content creation around digital transformation a recent renaming of a cycle of change some companies attempt to achieve some level of change aka transformation. Spoiler alert: many companies have no idea how hard it is and this is not a technology problem. It’s just plane old inertia. The dreaded status quo bias.
Some of the key things to keep in mind are outlined below. Most of this falls in the ‘no duh’ category and is likely, not surprising to anyone reading this. What is surprising is how many DTs team fail to or ignore these, ‘our team is different… we’ve accounted for this… we don’t see this as a problem.’ No one sets out to fail or fall down. We all bring the best intentions to our efforts, it’s the creeping vine of organizational inertia and broken communication and at worst passive aggression.
- Expect the unexpected— ‘Successful’ transformations benefit from the serendipitous discoveries that are not ignored.
- Know your audience, all of them — Any transformational requires deep understanding of those affected by it. Do the research, empathize, analyze and understand first/during/after.
- Context is king — context is hard to understand, from all angles focus on context which often will set the table for change, then dial in the right technology in the right context of use.
- Anticipate and accept failure — Pre-mortems and ‘how will this break’ questions can be at the heart of healthy governance and the acceptance and leadership in failure/learning.
- Methodologies dont work, people do— Too much process, not enough thinking for oneself, use them sparingly, they can stifle creativity and innovation.
- New things are hard— There is much resistance to new things, be ok with not being fully understood at first or for a long time.
- Everyone struggles with change— When transformation occurs it’s generally going to be when those struggling most struggle the least. This comes only after bringing everyone into the fold and swapping out the anxiety around the changes and replacing with the excitement for what lies ahead.
- Organizational inertia is a thing— Getting large complex orgs that are siloed to death are going to present inertia, be patient ‘..it’s like turning a battleship in a bathtub sometimes…’
- Data is everywhere— DT is an awesome hunting license for data of all sorts, do it. Get more data than you need and start having it tell you things… can be a source of inspiration and curiosity.
- Stay curious and keep asking why questions— Often the 5 Whys rule of thumb on especially DT often gets more challenging because teams accept this as they are rather than challenging status quo biases.
- Rigidity will break your transformation— DT teams often run up against hardened processes and tools that have far outlived their usefulness. Frequently these when made less rigid spark an opportunity to question lots of rigidness. (this is sometimes very hard) Digital Transformation Containment Fields can be everywhere.
- Unconscious incompetence(stole this from a client)— Knowing what you know, unknowns, unknown unknowns and the unknowable unknowns. These are what many DTs struggle with in the trenches day in day out. Learning plans, research trips, data, observables, hunches and accepting the uncertainty for a while can be a catalyst in any DT.
- Achieve Silent Utility™— It just works, no stars, no feedback good or bad, folks are able to have moments of achievement in the silent utility they experience from your DTs work. Enjoy the quiet!
- Solution orientation not problem orientation— Design thinking has been around for decades, for most DT teams it’s really just regular thinking… orient everyone to the idea that we are not focused on ‘solving a problem’ DT is about creating something with empathy, ideation and a focus on new/inventive insight driven solutions.
- DT is more hearts and minds than bits and bytes— Spending tons of time binging folks along for the journey and the best DTs have a relatively high EQ team that has near continuous engagement with stakeholders
- Pivots are expected, embrace them— You may pivot 4, 5, 6 times with a DT effort and it can happen at any stage or phase, knowing how to handle and embrace what a pivot means can make or break some DTs
- Model the Transformation behavior desired everywhere— There is an aspect of show and tell or show and sell, showing sharing and being the advocate is an effort all too often ignored or overlooked. You and your teams need to model the transformation to all audiences in a way that pulses the purpose and promotes the outcomes of successful transformation. Keep demoing the future, and how we are doing.
- Habit forming the hypothesis/experiment/observation for the whole organization— Teams want to make obvious and visible change, use whatever works. The scientific method is a good rubric for demonstrating a way of working that is visible, rational and can be supported in any transformation journey.
- DT teams are chefs not bakers — Opportunity for repetition with variation across any transformation fosters an environment of flexibility and excitement rather than one that forces uniformity and consistency.