This week’s five is a weekly column on five recent reads from all over the web. This week, we’ll talk about non-technical side of the digital transformation.
Take a break from your busy life—just a minute or two. Look around. Almost everything that makes your life easier is digital. Imagine, just for a moment, living without your computer. Imagine living without your phone, your appliances, and all the other digital equipment around you. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? If the digital world affects an individual’s life this much, think of how much it must affect a whole enterprise.
As you can tell from recent history, the digital world is highly dynamic. Not more than two decades ago, mobile phones were still new and only a few could have afforded it. Now, there are almost as many phones as there are people in the world. As an individual, you may find it easy to adapt to the perpetually changing digital world, but it’s tough for enterprises to keep up. Why? Let’s look at some stats: According to a new report from HBR Analytic Services, more than 50 percent of the laggards in the digital transformation arena have agreed that resisting risk, change, and experimentation is a major barrier. On top of that, only 20 percent of the laggards believe that digital performance affects revenue, whereas 75 percent of digital leaders buy into the power behind performance. No wonder they are laggards.
[To learn more on “laggards vs leaders,” click here.]
But again, laggards aren’t the only ones to blame for slow adoption of new tech. Digital transformation is a complex process, after all—it’s like changing a music DVD, ensuring that the music doesn’t stop while doing so. It can still be done smoothly and successfully provided you consider all important factors in the process, including: What business value will come out of the change? How are the customers going to take it? Leadership? Commitment? Cultural revolution? Partnerships? Digital transformation itself isn’t that hard—keeping everything else in mind at the same time is the real trick.
[To learn more about the commandments of digital transformation, click here.]
There’s something else to notice here—did you catch it? All the factors I just mentioned have one thing in common: People. Looks like most of the problems with digital transformation are created by the people of and around organizations. But why people? Probably because the human cost of digital transformation is very high. Already 63,000 layoffs have been announced by tech giants including Cisco and Dell. No wonder we’re all hesitant of change! Still, what has to be done, has to be done. The major question is: How do you initiate the transformation?
[To learn more about human cost of digital transformation, click here.]
Gartner spoke to the CIOs who have successfully transformed their organization. Through these conversations, Gartner identified three integral steps for any digital transformation initiative. The first step is to outline a new vision for the organization and describe the role IT will play in transformation. Next, you have to present this outline to executive leadership for approval, rejection, or revision. After the executive leadership is convinced, you have to convince mid-level managers and frontline staff. Some of them may resist the change, but the key here is to make them realize how the transformation will affect their roles. Make them feel important, make them feel like they’re being taken care of.
[To learn more about the three steps for digital transformation initiatives, click here.]
Digital transformation is, without a doubt, a hard step to take. But if you think about life without new technology, you’ll realize it’s as important to your enterprise as food is to life. And if you don’t take that step then and there, eventually your enterprise will suffer. Better start walking.
[Check out some digital transformation trends for 2017 right here.]
[P.S. For simple, fast, and efficient IT transformation, click here.]
Check out last week’s five here.
