From Digital Transformation to Digital Evolution

How to adapt continuously to avoid the pain of big bang transformation.

Organisations are organisms. And organisms evolve, one cell at a time.

Take humans. I like to joke that we don’t get a body upgrade every few years (wouldn’t that be wonderful), however our cells die and renew continuously. Within 10 years, a bone has completely remodelled itself and replaced every one of its cells. Fascinating.

Yes, death is part of the cycle. Still, for a variety of reasons we have such a hard time shelving the obsolete and embracing the new (check Joe MacLeod’s work on ends).

If you’ve been around the corporate world for a few years, you have certainly come across organisations engaging in big-bang digital transformation.

Usually advised by consulting management firms, those transformation rounds are often synonym of redundancies, restructurations and role changes to suit whatever framework is in trend at the time.

That is big surgery right there.

Surfing the wave for way too long

Don’t get me wrong, transformation is often very much needed – sometimes well overdue.

It’s easy to fall in the trap of surfing the wave way too long without realising the amount of effort required to swim all the way back and catch the next wave, while nimble competitors have been lining up where all the action is.

Surfing the good old wave is comfortable, enjoying the momentum, feeling in control: you want to enjoy every last second of it because it’s working. Until you get to the shore. What’s our business model now?

To paraphrase Gus Balbotin, momentum is great if you’re on the right trajectory. But if it prevents you from correcting your path it will very much play against you.

When risk aversion backfires

It’s natural to want to cling to the known, to what has proven successful in the past. The decision to do so is often driven by risk aversion. Ironically, holding on to the known tools, processes and structures in order to avoid or control risk is actually much riskier than taking action and embracing innovation.

Face the technical debt

I’ve seen it many times, in companies of all sizes, startup to corporate.

Some tool is in desperate need for an upgrade, or it’s become obvious some code needs serious refactoring. But “we don’t have time for technical debt”, it will only slow us down, upset our sacred deadlines.

Deciding to “stick with it” is not safe by any means. Sooner or later you will have to act, and the longer you wait the more painful it will be.

A bias for action

Unless your are planning for a gradual downscaling of your activities, you need to be ready to shift gears, both up and down.

That translates to educated, data-driven decisions based on direct and constant feedback loops with the market, as described by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Sneiden in “Sense and Respond”.

Find your own model

When you consider ways of working, what works for other organisations may not work for you. Different geographical, cultural, social, timely, political contexts (consider Porter’s 5 forces) mean that agility should look different in different companies. The right approach is certainly not to blindly apply the Spotify model or SAFE to every possible team in any possible context.

A standard is nothing outside the context of use.

It is certainly a great idea to look outwards for inspiration, inside and outside your industry, and learn from others’ approaches. But when it comes to applying those ideas in your own ecosystem, only three things matter: experimentation, success metrics and adaptation (the organisational-level “build measure learn”).

Adapt constantly

“Implement, measure, learn”, “sense and respond”. These do not solely apply to software development.

Why stick to business plans, yearly marketing plans, and arbitrary deadlines even when proven wrong? Because we committed to them, and our whole funding system depends on that. Are we ready to move on from obsolete business models, even if it challenges the way we’ve always done things?

The best way to stay competitive and relevant is to adapt. Sadly, in a number of companies, leadership is disconnected from the teams, and more often than not, from their very users.

Adaptation means trusting and empowering teams. It requires constant feedback loops with both teams and users.

It will still hurt

There is no growth without tension.

Continuous adaptation means making tough decisions, adopting new tools and processes, parking things that may still be perceived as valuable, constantly prioritising and refining.

It takes a bold business approach and a strong vision.