The Tao of digital transformation

Things move. Things change. The world is spinning at 1000 miles an hour, and it’s hurtling through the universe relative to everything else. People die, babies are born. Life is never static.

If you stand still, eventually you’ll be left behind.

When we put processes in place, they eventually outlive their usefulness. Then we need to figure out what to do and how to change to become relevant again.

This is a problem in a lot of areas, not least big enterprise companies. Sometimes because of regulation, sometimes because we’re entrenched in our old ways, companies stagnate while leaner, newer ones seem to race past and thrive.

Most people agree we need to change to stay relevant, but how? Where should we draw inspiration from?

What is Taoism?

Taoism is a philosophy, centred around balance, harmony and nature.

Around 500BC in China, so the story goes, the keeper of the royal archives was an extremely wise and learned person called Lao Tzu. One day, he’d had enough and decided to leave and travel into the wilderness.

As he was leaving, a city guard recognised him and asked him to write down his beliefs and philosophy before he went away for good. He set out 81 verses, and this is known as the Tao Te Ching.

This story is almost certainly made up. Historians aren’t even sure if he was one person, a number of people or made up entirely. But it’s the foundation of almost all eastern philosophy and is considered one of the most important books ever written. It’s been translated over 200 languages and the only book to have sold more copies is the King James Bible.

Personally it is the best description I’ve found of how the universe works and what our place is in it. So let’s get to explaining a bit of it.

Ching means book (easy enough).

Tao means way or path.

Just like you’d think, it could be the path to follow, the way you should go, the way something should be done.

Te means virtue.

Virtue normally means something a moral trait. In this book it’s more subtle. For me it helps to think about it like a petrol tank. There are ways to gain virtue and fill your tank, but some things you do will spend it and empty the tank.

I’ve read it different translations of it, some of them many, many times over, and different aspects have helped me understand a lot about the way we live and why. Here are 5 ways that I think we can apply the teachings of the Tao Te Ching to digital transformation.

The sage acts without striving and teaches without words.

The principal character in the Tao, if there is one, is the sage. This is you, at your best. The times where you know what needs to be done, patient and kind enough to let others come to their own realisation of what you already know (or don’t know). Not because you want to show off and say you’re right, but because you’ve got enough virtue in your tank to not need the instant praise and gratification.

To change a culture is to change minds. People can’t have their minds changed, people change their own minds. When you’re trying to talk to a stakeholder, a leader who doesn’t “get it”, who’s better placed to affect that change, the angry warlord or the sage?

Without the right attitude from the people starting the transformation, it won’t even get started.

2. Benefit comes from what is there, usefulness from what is not there

A water jug works because there is space for you to fill. Without the space you can’t have water, and without the jug you can’t hold the water.

All systems have an interplay between high and low, new and old, full and empty, and it’s the space in-between, the moving from one state to the other from which we derive value.

Transformation of an industry, of a company, you’re starting in situ. There’s stuff already there that is either doing its job well, badly or not at all. There are jobs that need to be done that aren’t getting done.

What is there and not benefiting anyone? An old website? Processes slowing people down? Too many layers of hierarchy? Create usefulness from the space you create from removing the things that are not benefiting anyone.

Where is there a gap that is specifically not useful? Two teams working on similar ideas but are unable able to communicate with each other? Business units unable to function as best they could because of the same problems? Bridge the gap by putting something there, create benefit.

3. The highest good is like water; it flows in places people reject and so is like the tao

“Being soft and bending is the disciple of life.”

An old tree cannot move in the face of strong winds like a young sapling can. Skyscrapers are built to sway so they don’t fall down.

We don’t get to choose which parts of the organisation have been belittled, overlooked and undervalued. We don’t get to start with the place we want to start. If we do, we encounter resistance, or use too much of our energy in places that don’t need us. We don’t succeed.

Our challenge is to listen, to be like that water and pool our energy and resources in the parts of the organisation that it naturally gravitates to.

There are pockets in any organisational structure we can catalyse. There are cracks that run deep that you can only find by following that path of least resistance.

4. Those who would conquer must yield, And those who conquer do so because they yield.

When the Romans invaded Celtic Britain, they couldn’t fight for long. The Romans yielded to pagan festivals, appropriated their gods and made it easier for Celts to blur the line between the two cultures. They shared their settlements, technology like underfloor heating, and their excellent wine. The Celts yielded to the Romans by sharing their land instead of fighting to the death and in doing so “conquered” by achieving peace, a better quality of life, safety and security.

Most trees and plant species thrive in their environment because of fungus intertwined in their root systems. The fungal species helps the trees suck up vital nutrients to maintain healthy growth. In return the fungal species use the sugar from the roots systems to survive.

You can’t have big without small, or small without big.

Digital transformation, by its very nature, starts with a small group of people trying to change a bigger group (what would we need to transform if we were already aligned and functioning?). The bigger part must conquer by yielding, lest they go the way of the brittle old oak in the face of a big storm. They become stronger, more resilient for understanding the small and absorbing

Does it matter what we call a show & tell, or does it matter that we’re fostering open and honest communication between stakeholders?

Does it matter if an alpha is called an alpha, or does it matter that we’re proving value with less risk?

Compromise does not mean sacrificing integrity.

5. To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

When we lead from the front, when we’re too showy, a cult of personality often arises. We gain popularity and the culture will seem to change fast. Hype. Excitement. But is that really embedded?

Strong winds do not last all day.

These are flowers that will never bear fruit.

There comes a time to leave a company, when our job is done. The tao says to do what must be done, to leave nothing undone, then retire when the job is done.

If we foster a culture that lives and breathes that change, that is slowly and fundamentally integrated into the system and organisation with better ways of working, that change will persist far after we’ve gone.

Thanks for reading.

Digital transformation can be tough. It can be long. It can be stressful and you can pull your hair out and cry. It’s an uphill battle and when it’s done it doesn’t feel it. It feels like they’ll never understand. When I’m faced with that, I try and remember this:

The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.

The whole book is a source of information and inspiration, but I’ll leave you with one more and leave it there.

Great accomplishment seems imperfect, Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.

End.

(Image from drunktiki.com)