Member Article

Getting into shape for digital, and times of crisis

Digital transformation was always hard in large organisations and now many companies are seeing the journey becoming more urgent as the current environment forces most of us to become remote, digital workers and citizens.

Add to this the fact that funding is drying up with the economy in increasing dire straits (and it was not in a strong shape when coronavirus struck), budgets will move in the opposite direction to demand. Companies simply need to do more with less, now more than ever.

A recent Econsultancy and Marketing Week survey that investigated the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak on the marketing industry found that among 500 marketers in the UK and North America, 9 in 10 predicted an increase in the use of online services by consumers in the midst of the outbreak. However, half of the same respondents admitted that planned technology or infrastructure spending in their own companies was either delayed or under review. 50% also said that they have delayed or are reviewing strategic initiatives, such as digital transformation or restructuring.

So, what does this mean?

Digital transformation is difficult

The meaning of ‘digital transformation’ has always been simple, clear and strong - it explicitly means there is a pre-digital state of doing business and a post-digital state of doing business, and that to progress from one state to the other successfully requires a transformation of the business itself. The resulting success will demonstrate those organisations that have taken it seriously versus those that haven’t.

The fact is, transformation is very hard and commonly done poorly by senior decision makers, to the extent that the phrase ‘digital transformation’ is now being pilloried. Failures can almost universally be pinned to decision makers who don’t understand the huge difference between an organisation that is shaped well for providing services that harness digital ways of working and an organisation that isn’t at all shaped to harness the benefits of digital ways of working.

So how can organisations be better prepared digitally for future crises?

Are you in ’shape’?

Consider the ‘shape’ of your organisation. If you have a COO who owns tech and has recently had digital thrown in, is this the right senior management model in a business of 30,000 people? No, because the COO must focus on the cogs and wheels of the organisation that facilitate its mission. Whereas digital is for many companies now delivering the mission, just as it is now at the heart of society, and hence it must be an integral part of each core service and product offering. Service owners must oversee all aspects of digital in their service, taking responsibility for quality, targets, costs, performance, and new opportunities that are requisite in any good service. This mean they directly must have the team, people and skills, to deliver.

The challenges of any stalled digital transformation tend towards the top of the business. At the top, amongst senior decision makers, there can be a lack of digital knowledge or openness to change, which is absolutely necessary for digital transformation to take hold and ‘filter down’ through the wider business. These are the people who ultimately call the shots and control the purse strings. In times of financial instability, like now, it can be all too easy to have a digital transformation project caught up in the list of things to shelve or put on the back burner. This is especially easy if there isn’t the c-suite buy-in to begin with. Overhauling the thinking of senior decision-makers is probably the single most important step in the success of any digital transformation initiative.

That said, while we’d all start at the top if we could, an alternative approach is to start at the bottom of the business, amongst your everyday workers and teams. Especially in larger organisations, the agile and adaptable mentality required to enact a lean start-up approach crucial to change can so often be lacking, but it is possible to instil this through a small focussed team. When facing legacy practices and departments resistant to change, creating a guerrilla start-up task force with the goal of driving change is often the radical, hence risky, much-needed step. Ultimately though, getting the sign off for this reverts back to the top of the business, so getting as much mileage as you can before showing this new capability off to decision makers is essential. It’s likely that the efficiency and effectiveness with which they produce new value for the organisation will win the day and kick-start wider transformation.

Prepare for the future, don’t just react to the present

Covid-19 has demonstrated the need for digital transformation – if you haven’t already embraced digital and transformed your organisation as a result, when disaster strikes in the modern era, you will be worse equipped to deal with it. Community operates on a digital level – we are a digital society and if you cannot engage at the ‘people’ level, you will fundamentally not be successful. Many large companies, have been extremely quiet, not just because of the financial implications of the pandemic, but because they can’t engage in new ways and they can’t pivot fast to new ways of delivering core services that for example used to rely on human contact, and neither can they embrace new opportunities that are arising at the same time. The UK government, on the other hand, is showing benefits of recent years of digital transformation.

GOV.UK from day 1 of Covid-19 has constantly delivered updated communications, many times a day as necessary, and some departments have prototyped and spun up new services within days to deal with the crisis.

Doing the right things

In the 21st century we can choose to do different things, and to do things differently. This choosing must now include a deep understanding of digital if you wish to be successful in your mission.

Companies need to keep their digital transformation going even in, and in fact to prepare for, these times of change and times of crisis. Otherwise, they are not going to be viable in the medium to long term.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ben Stewart .