First principles to be effective in transformation
Many traditional organisations are ambitiously embarking on their journey of Digital Transformation. Having Digital transformation as part of your organisation goal is a good signal that the organisation has realised that transformation is essential to keep up with changing trends and satisfy the market mass that is steadily adopting Digital technologies as part of their day to day lives. And historically many companies have failed in their transformation journey or they are making a very slow process because of various reasons. Here are some popular reasons why they fail and how can they take a SMART step that would steadily help them transform while keeping their lights on.
Organisation leadership alignment
Often times transformation goals are set by a visionary leader in the C group and the rest of the C suite and the ground teams hesitantly or sometimes ignorantly nod their heads to go with it. And often half of the leadership team lacks the understanding of Digital technology potential that is fuelling the economy and the big product organisations that have monopolised the market. This kind of misalignment and lack of knowledge hugely impacts and slows down the transformation process tremendously.A good head start is when your own organisation leadership team is well aligned on the transformation goals and the values of it. Create a visionary compelling story of how your organisations can benefit from it and ensure your leadership team is well aligned before you heat up the engines to keep going.
Set goals that are small and achievable
Any kind of change that involves human society is hard and time consuming. Our brains are so tuned to biases of the past and it takes tremendous amount of energy to rewire the brain to think differently. So be willing to spend that effort and time to transform. Plan and make a small step that could be a good learning experiment to get a preview of what does it really mean to transform and how to go about it. Keep the learnings in mind, slowly re-iterate and then keep moving taking one step at a time. Aggressive spending or setting unachievable goals is not the ideal way to expedite the process. Slow and steady progress is more valuable than reckless speed.
Transformation experiments run by digitally skilled teams
Its common that teams that are assigned with transformation goals don’t have enough skills or knowledge about latest technologies or how to execute such humongous changes. This leads to poor execution and eventually another failed attempt of transformation. Ensure the teams are digitally skilled and have the right knowledge of Digital technologies and processes needed before you assign them with transformation goals.
Support, learn and focus on progress
Sometimes organisations get so hung up on the money they spent on the transformation experiment and why it wasn’t successful. Its not always easy to put a solid number for these kind of transformation experiment. Instead focus on the learning. Learn about why it wasn’t successful, measure how much did you learn from this experiment and see how you can re iterate with the learnings and try again. Don’t be surprised you failed, instead pick up the learnings and give it another try. Keep moving forward and slowly you will see the changes starting to manifest.
Communicate and share
Progress is fast and easy when the mass is well educated of the value and are supportive of the changes. Ensure any kind of learning from small transformation experiments are well shared within the organisation and don’t hesitate to share the failures too. Being vulnerable and open is one of the key psychological success factors for mass adoption. When people make a connection with the experience, it makes them more engaged, eventually driving the buy-in for this kind of human intense transformation journey.
Plan your next big moves ahead
If you are an organisation that was successful in a transformation experiment, then you would’ve start to realise the cost and the side effects of it as well. Start planning for how you can mitigate some of the implicit side effects that comes with the transformation and start laying the ground work for facing those challenges when its time. Example, if some of the old technologies that are becoming obsolete as part of the transformation, start planning on how to manage the workforce that needs to embrace the new changes.
