Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Digital Transformation is not about Technology, but about Mindset!

. According to this article in the Harvard Business Review, about 70% of the $1.3T (trillion) that was spent on by businesses worldwide in 2018 was wasted. Because, businesses did not bring the right Mindset to the act. This manifested itself in various ways - for example, businesses did not adopt an decisionmaking or a rapid prototyping culture, with a flat organizational structure (i.e. the 'Fail Early, Fast and Often (till you succeed)' mantra that is said to describe current-day Silicon Valley Culture.

Or, because businesses ignored (and/or failed to recognize subtly expressed) employee fears about technologies, such as 'Artificial Intelligence'. Whether the fear were 'legitimate' or 'ill-founded' they must be responded to, never ignored. In the same vein, management is known to ignore existing in-house talent, experience or  skill sets (preferring instead the quick 'external consulting fix'). For something like digital transformation to work, it needs to be fully owned by current employees, ideally co-created by them with external consultants or advisers (but only when necessary).

Or,  what really did them in - failure in implementing Digital Transformation occurred because businesses had a technology-centric strategy, instead of having a business-centric one. The peer-pressure businesses feel to 'adopt AI' is well-known. But unless a business has thought through how additional technological capabilities fit into their business strategy, and whether, how and where in the organization these can credibly fit in, any investment into 'digital transformation' will not achieve its potential - rather the opposite would happen.

The bottom line in this discussion then comes down to realizing that Digital Transformation is not about a specific technology, it is instead about the Mindset. Not having the right mindset, which needs the right culture and cues from management on down - is thus a recipe for failure!