Digital Transformation is not about technology
The problem of the Personbyte
Ceasar Hidalgo, in his book Why Information Grows, introduces the idea of the Personbyte — essentially, the amount of knowledge a single person can effectively wield. This idea of finite capacity for a single person to handle tasks at a high level plays a large role in how digital transformation pans out.
When we look back to the early 90s, we all know that Jeff Bezos started Amazon and that Elon Musk started Paypal. And while they may have had some financial help, some mentorship — someone must have introduced them to the internet — we can all agree that they essentially bootstrapped the first working version on their own.
Could you create a rival Paypal today — by yourself? No. Paypal has grown beyond what a single person can manage in terms of skillset.
Let’s take something simple — mobile apps. How many cutting edge front-end, web developers, are equally skilled in iOS, Android, and HTML5/CSS/Javascript development? The answer is none — a skill in one discipline is always acquired at the cost of another skill. It is the Opportunity Cost of the Knowledge Economy.
But how many products can succeed against the barrage of competition by just delivering a functionally correct website? In a previous article I argue that applications have become commoditized and to be competitive companies must cater their product design to the user. A single person cannot manage the breath of skills required to achieve this. You need a team, and usually you will need groups of teams collectively handling specific disciplines.
The problem of the Personbyte when it comes to transformation
The saying goes that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. While this is probably not entirely accurate for humans, it plays a role. A Senior Manager or Director at a large Enterprise probably spent the last 10, 15 years climbing up a certain set of stairs and has obtained the ability to be successful in this setting. Telling them to adopt an agile mindset, changing their title from manager to Agile Coach, and getting them to go out and get SAFE certified will usually not do the trick.
This person has 15 years of knowledge doing things one way, when they learn a new vocabulary they will simply try to adopt their existing understanding to the new vocabulary. What you end up is not two week sprints, but 6 sprint waterfalls. Agility is about embracing change, enterprises are about building rigid frames. A single person would first have to unlearn the need for rigid frames before they can embrace agile.
Bitesize the transformation
Most organizations want to throw millions at DevOps, CI/CD etc. None of those matters if the top down requirement is to just deliver a very narrow set of features without customer empathy. I don’t know what the answer is but I know that adopting technology is a costly waste of time if the mindset is not there, and changing job titles doesn’t change someone’s way of thinking.
Organizations must first accept risk, and if risk is unacceptable, they must develop new frameworks in which risk becomes acceptable. Without the ability to accept risks transformation is a joke.
Second, organizations must understand that now digital is the product while in the past digital was providing access to the product. A good example is the bank branch.
A digital app is not replacing branch technology, it is not replacing the SWIFT network, it is not replacing card transaction — it is replacing person-to-person interaction. This means the app is not transactional but experiential — it is a new space, not a new technology.
Leadership needs to understand that risk must become acceptable, experiments are necessary, and that digital is not technology. With this in mind a cultural change needs to proceed any type of technology strategy or the Personbyte problem will ensure that transformation is caught in a web of personal growth challenges.
