15 Digital Transformation Principles

If we’re going to get better at bringing digital to the heart of our organisations, then we need to expand our thinking beyond simply making the most technically capable digital tools, campaigns or products. In no particular order, here are a few thoughts on some principles that might help us do that:

1. Don’t use acronyms. Don’t use acronyms. Don’t use acronyms.
2. Appreciate different people’s world views — some folks want things to stay the same just as much as you want them to change. For them, change isn’t exciting, it’s scary.
3. Compromise is not a dirty word.
4. Assume that people come to work wanting to do a good job. If they’re being ‘difficult’, look at yourself first before you blame them.
5. “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”. Einstein was smarter than you or me and he thought that you shouldn’t have to use technical language.
6. Begin with the starting point that if something’s existed for a while, the underlying user need is likely to be sound.
7. Using ‘agile’ and ‘iteration’ as an excuse for slapdash thinking or execution isn’t good enough.
8. Understanding builds empathy, which leads to respect and eventually trust. Try and complete this journey with everyone you work with.
9. Be aware that a lot of the people you speak to are afraid of losing their jobs to a computer.
10. Assume that you’re going to be out of a job in 5 years and that everything we’re doing is transitory.
11. Statistics, user research and surveys can be interpreted or manipulated to support a myriad of view points — don’t act like they are a single source of truth.
12. Be a student of organisational change — there is a huge amount of literature out there, because most of this is not new.
13. Never create, document or research a user journey without considering channels which aren’t digital.
14. We will appreciate, empathise with and respect other peoples’ culture and ways of making decisions.
15. Understand that most things aren’t new. EVERY digital tool has an analogue equivalent.

These are the principles that we use at William Joseph when working on any digital transformation project. Give us a shout if you’re wondering how to get things moving across your organisation to make the most of the opportunities digital channels allow — james@williamjoseph.co.uk