Let’s Talk About Digital Transformation.

Enterprises are struggling because they are using yesterday’s paradigms to solve today’s problems.

Digital transformation is the profound transformation of business and organizational activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way, with present and future shifts in mind.

There are a lot of buzz words when we talk about Digital Transformation but for some reason organisations adopt a myopic view to digital transformation. Two phrases come to mind ‘Cloud First' and ‘Cloud Shift’. And to a lesser extent; ‘Hybrid'

So do you migrate to the Cloud and dust off your hands. Job done. Mission accomplished. Sit back and let the profits roll in. You’re in the future now.

Obviously not.

The case for cloud based strategies is obvious. If you’re not in the cloud business, managing data centers and IT systems isn’t a core competency. It’s more economical and efficient to pay for what you use from a superior service like Azure at lower costs due to shared economies of scale. In addition, you can take advantage of an ecosystem of tools and services designed to accelerate development.

While cloud migration is an admirable goal; an organisation cannot compete in the global marketplace simply by migrating to the cloud. If everyone is doing it, it’s not innovation. And innovation is how you survive in the Digital Era.

So how do you innovate?

Expanding Your Organisation’s Approach

“These are completely different classes of problem. It makes perfect sense that the same framework would not apply to both”.

Rob Wolcott, Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Kellogg likes to say about companies dealing with a changing environment, “You take the new thing and shove it into the old paradigm”.

You need to stop playing defense and start playing offense. Digital Transformation (in my humble opinion) is just Disruptive Innovation for Enterprises.

Disruptive Innovation looks like Amazon buying Whole Foods to instantly acquire a critical mass of customers and physical stores as local distribution hubs to disrupt the grocery business. Sustaining Innovation looks like yet another bank adding USSD dial codes to their services portfolio.

More than ever, enterprises need to focus on what really drives revolutionary innovation: the few great ideas inside or outside a company that will refactor an industry for the digital era.

With this in mind, take the biggest, best idea from all of your programs and processes, and ask yourself a simple, honest question: Will this program define the future of your industry or will this process enable you to lead the future of your industry?

If the answer is no, then it’s time to revisit your strategy for the future.

The Key to Digital Transformation

“[transformation happens]…not [just] around process, but rather organizing humans in a way that allows us the opportunity to remain agile in a changing environment.”

-Nate Walkingshaw, CXO of Pluralsight

I previously likened Digital Transformation to Disruptive Innovation and in my previous article, Thinking Inside The Box, I discussed how standards can stifle creativity in moving forward as ideas.

So how can you break out of this mold and use Digital Transformation as a strategy to move your business forward?

“In times of change the greatest danger is to act with yesterday’s logic”

- Peter Drucker

Gerd Leonhard, a Futurist says that we are at a pivot point of exponential change: a point in history where humanity will change more in the next twenty years than in the previous 300. As such, leaders must shift from a focus on what is, to a focus on what could be.

Businesses need to build a plan to participate in that future, emphasizing the question is no longer what-if, but what-when. We are entering an era where the impossible is doable.

Of course not everyone can set the trend moving forward, but if you anticipate and set Digital Transformation strategies in place that focus not just on process but empowering employees to be able to adapt to the changing times then you can react quickly enough to ride the wave.

And that is what Digital Transformation should be.