Five ways to avoid digital transformation burnout

1. Know why you’re transforming

Research from Econo­com shows that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion fail­ures are all too com­mon, with one in four UK projects fail­ing to realise their desired goals.

“There is a big risk that trans­for­ma­tion projects can run out of steam. They’re typ­i­cal­ly quite long and they’re usu­al­ly dis­rup­tive to ways of work­ing, so it can seem like an uphill bat­tle,” says George Mar­cotte, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Accen­ture Dig­i­tal, UK and Ire­land. “How­ev­er, if you take the right steps at the begin­ning of the project, you can stop these chal­lenges turn­ing into neg­a­tiv­i­ty towards the trans­for­ma­tion.”

The first of these steps is arguably estab­lish­ing why you actu­al­ly want to dig­i­tal­ly trans­form the in the first place. “Estab­lish the why. Rein­force the why. Val­i­date and evolve the why. Com­mu­ni­cate it again and again,” says Ben Hart, found­ing part­ner of busi­ness futures prac­tice Atmos­phere. He adds that this “why” must be “com­pelling, clear, believ­able and moti­vat­ing”.

Indeed, organ­i­sa­tions that don’t devel­op a strong “why” may strug­gle to con­vince employ­ees of the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. “With­out a clear focus and a ded­i­cat­ed work­force, projects will fail, result­ing in trans­for­ma­tion lethar­gy and a con­sen­sus among staff who ‘have seen it all before’ that ‘noth­ing will ever real­ly change’,” says Irene Molodtsov, chief exec­u­tive of busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion con­sul­tan­cy Sia Part­ners UK.

2. Share goals, successes and failures

Even when organ­i­sa­tions do have a strong vision in place, poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion can still lead to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion fail­ures. “Far too often a trans­for­ma­tion project is launched with a fan­fare,” Ms Molodtsov at Sia Part­ners UK explains. “Then time pass­es, noth­ing is heard and the project is for­got­ten. So when a staff com­mu­ni­ca­tion is final­ly sent out, it is not met with the enthu­si­asm that is required to ensure long-term suc­cess.”

Mes­sages from senior lead­ers should be short and sim­ple, she adds. “Remem­ber that the fre­quen­cy of these mes­sages is also impor­tant to help ensure staff are kept up to date with progress.” Lead­ers should also strive to be open. “All trans­for­ma­tion­al projects suf­fer set­backs. This is nor­mal. Tell staff; they will appre­ci­ate both the hon­esty and humil­i­ty. Oth­er­wise, both rumour and lies will under­mine the suc­cess of the project,” says Ms Molodtsov.

Ide­al­ly, every­one should feel able to get behind the company’s strat­e­gy. “If you don’t have peo­ple on board with the change and dri­ving it all lev­els, then you’re going to get hit with nat­ur­al resis­tance points, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the mid­dle-man­age­ment lev­el,” says David Hol­l­i­day, part­ner at Gate One, a dig­i­tal and busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion con­sul­tan­cy. “That can be a big chal­lenge.”

3. Don’t overemphasise tech’s role

“Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion that hinges around tech­nol­o­gy, as opposed to the ben­e­fits and out­comes it will achieve for peo­ple, tal­ent inter­nal­ly and cus­tomers exter­nal­ly, will almost cer­tain­ly fail,” says Atmosphere’s Mr Hart. “Fatigue can set in quick­ly when tech­nol­o­gy leads and peo­ple are expect­ed to ‘get it’ with­out invest­ment in new peo­ple-led skills, atti­tudes and behav­iours for dig­i­tal suc­cess.”

Devolv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to the IT depart­ment can also cause dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion fail­ures. “In many cas­es, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is still entrust­ed to the IT depart­ment alone, which must bal­ance this respon­si­bil­i­ty with day-to-day main­te­nance and pur­su­ing inno­v­a­tive new con­cepts that dri­ve the com­pa­ny for­ward,” says Ian Fair­clough, vice pres­i­dent of ser­vices, office of the chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa (EMEA), at Mule­Soft. “This leaves IT with an insur­mount­able task that, unsur­pris­ing­ly, often leads to burnout.”

Inef­fi­cient use of exist­ing resources can com­pound the prob­lem. “All too often, IT staff will spin up new dig­i­tal projects from scratch, with­out first look­ing to use dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties that might already exist else­where with­in the busi­ness,” says Mr Fair­clough. “Effec­tive­ly, this involves IT staff doing a lot of the same foun­da­tion work over and over again, cre­at­ing a ‘Ground­hog Day’ sce­nario that makes dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects take longer than they need to.”

4. Encourage everyone to contribute

When dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion becomes the pre­serve of one depart­ment or cer­tain teams, it’s almost inevitable that those on the out­side will lose inter­est, result­ing in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion fail­ures. Indeed, as Mr Hart at Atmos­phere says: “Being heard, involved and hav­ing a voice helps to increase engage­ment, reduc­ing fatigue.”

Engag­ing with interns or grad­u­ates who’ve grown up in a world of rapid dig­i­tal change can also help to coun­ter­bal­ance the lethar­gy of senior staff who are wed­ded to cur­rent ways of work­ing or cyn­i­cal about the need for dig­i­tal change. “In many organ­i­sa­tions, the thought lead­er­ship, devel­op­ment and fresh think­ing on dig­i­tal, AI and robot­ics has migrat­ed to this [younger] age group,” says Sia Part­ners UK’s Ms Molodtsov, who believes these indi­vid­u­als are like­ly to feel any­thing but fatigued by the dig­i­tal vision and agen­da set at the top of the organ­i­sa­tion.

The IT team can also help to democ­ra­tise inno­va­tion by con­nect­ing the organisation’s dig­i­tal assets with appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces and expos­ing them on an appli­ca­tion net­work, so any­one in the busi­ness can eas­i­ly dis­cov­er and har­ness them. “In this way, any­one, not just the IT team, can start build­ing new dig­i­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices based on exist­ing capa­bil­i­ties,” Mr Fair­clough at Mule­Soft explains.

5. Look for quick wins and build on them

If your dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy doesn’t allow for mea­sur­able suc­cess­es ear­ly in the process, it can start to feel “like a long slog towards a mov­ing tar­get that can appear per­sis­tent­ly dis­tant”, says Atmosphere’s Mr Hart. “If this occurs, for months or even years, peo­ple can quick­ly lose sight of why they are even doing this in the first place.”

Felix Gerdes, EMEA direc­tor of dig­i­tal inno­va­tion at Insight, advis­es busi­ness­es to remem­ber the sto­ry of the tor­toise and the hare if they want to avoid dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion fail­ures. “They must pace them­selves when it comes to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, mak­ing sure they do not burn out by embark­ing on too many ini­tia­tives at the same time,” he says. “It makes sense to first focus on a small num­ber of projects that can gen­er­ate quick wins as this helps to devel­op high­ly moti­vat­ed cham­pi­ons in the organ­i­sa­tion.”

Mr Hol­l­i­day at Gate One believes there is often a mis­con­cep­tion at board lev­el that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a des­ti­na­tion with a defined end-date. “There’s a con­stant need to evolve, to adapt, to explore new inno­va­tions. So it’s not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a full-time com­mit­ment to a new way of work­ing. And I think that gets right to the heart of the ques­tion of fatigue,” he con­cludes.