How digital transformation is a state of mind

Dig­i­tal is not tech­nol­o­gy; it’s empow­er­ing peo­ple, organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture and new behav­iours. As a leader it’s clear­ly with­in your role and skills set, but it has con­fus­ing, exclud­ing lan­guage and chal­lenges you with con­stant change.

To put this all in con­text, the waves of dig­i­tal change have been rock­ing our col­lec­tive boat for some time and many of us now know that inac­tion will result in a cap­size. As dig­i­tal lead­ers we are turn­ing our boats into the waves and are start­ing to make our way.

So far there have been three waves, one behind us, one we are going through and now a third.

The waves of disruption

The first wave of dig­i­tal change to hit us was about our organisation’s user inter­face, the front end, putting a mod­ern dig­i­tal front door on an old mod­el and updat­ing how we inter­act with cus­tomers and cit­i­zens. Led by mar­ket­ing or the IT team, it still felt like a project, remote from lead­er­ship and with an end-date and bud­get.

The sec­ond wave to strike us was dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. No longer about the front end and not about tech, but a whole organ­i­sa­tion rethink from end to end. It was change in response to new alien eco­nom­ic fac­tors and dis­rup­tion that comes from unex­pect­ed places. Cer­tain­ly a project for a leader, but not a project in the sense that it had know­able para­me­ters, time­lines or costs, but now mis­sion crit­i­cal.

Change is hard

To quote WPP founder Sir Mar­tin Sor­rell: “As an exist­ing busi­ness, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is like chang­ing the engines on a plane while fly­ing.”

There is con­stant change, so the route to becom­ing a dig­i­tal busi­ness is not a project to be planned and man­aged; it is a way of behav­ing and think­ing. As much quot­ed cas­es have shown, like Block­buster video’s, being the incum­bent and hav­ing a strong brand can’t pro­tect you if the busi­ness cul­ture is wrong.

Your com­pe­ti­tion is dig­i­tal-first and is rethink­ing your indus­try. They are unin­hib­it­ed by prof­it and loss to deter­mine their val­ue and access to cap­i­tal. Take WeWork, already the sec­ond-largest occu­pi­er of office space in the UK after the gov­ern­ment, they opened 40 new offices in Lon­don in the last few months. They are rein­vent­ing the work­place and rewrit­ing the land­lord-ten­ant rela­tion­ship.

On the Dig­i­tal Lead­ers Pod­cast, we recent­ly inter­viewed Leni Zneimer, gen­er­al man­ag­er, UK and Ire­land, for WeWork. Far from being a grandee of London’s prop­er­ty sec­tor, she is a 27-year-old psy­chol­o­gy grad­u­ate.

Landing in a digital age

As a dig­i­tal leader, you need to get out of your indus­try echo cham­ber. You won’t meet what’s going to kill you at your industry’s annu­al con­fer­ence. You need to net­work with peo­ple from across all sec­tors and access thought lead­er­ship writ­ten by peo­ple who don’t know any­thing about your indus­try. Yet this advice con­tra­dicts so many tra­di­tion­al norms.

As a leader, you need to give your peo­ple per­mis­sion to change, test and inno­vate, and you need a sup­ply chain that behaves the same way.

The third wave

Incon­ve­nient­ly and before we are ready, a third wave is break­ing over us and it’s even more dis­rup­tive than the first two. Automa­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, big data, immer­sive tech, the inter­net of things and 5G are going to offer you and your com­peti­tors new and dra­mat­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness growth. As a dig­i­tal leader, you may now be bet­ter pre­pared than for the pre­vi­ous waves, but rest assured you will need all the new skills you have learnt so far and more to make a suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion. Good luck.