Written by Lori Schmidt, AWE Bold Leadership Program Lead.
Leading digital transformation, especially in today’s environment requires top to bottom organizational change. It requires leaders who are willing and able to leverage digital to innovate, fail fast and drive value in an ambiguous context. There has been a push recently for businesses to implement digital transformation strategies and adapt quickly which has led to a lot of failures, with about 70% of digital transformation initiatives failing. While you embark on your digital transformation journey, it’s important to also consider why they fail. It often has to do with:
Lack of clarity in your business on impacts of digital transformation
Lack of definition of what digital transformation means to your business
Not setting proper goals around digital transformation
Avoiding technology discussions in your teams
Forgetting to ask "what do customers want?"
Culture that negatively deals with failure, not promoting innovations or change
Tony Saldanha, a former P&G digital transformation leader and author of “Why Digital Transformations Fail”, put it this way:
“The biggest challenge in today’s world is the language related to digital transformation. The term has been co-opted by every IT marketing person selling anything from an email upgrade to artificial intelligence.
Around the world, organizations are spending about a trillion dollars a year on digital transformation. Seventy percent of those transformations fail. I believe that this is happening because language prevents business owners from setting the right end goal. It also prevents them from following a very disciplined approach to getting there.”
A report from CompleteSpectrum showed a confusing mix of definitions of digital transformation from senior leaders. These senior leaders only agreed on one thing — 94% reported that digital transformation was high on their list of priorities.
It makes sense that digital transformation will vary for a bank versus a university versus a toothpaste brand, so it’s critical for teams within your business to have that clarity. Definition, clarity of business goals and strategy as well as fostering a culture of change, innovation and failing fast will impact whether you fail or succeed in your journey.
Now that we have totally scared you off of pursuing a digital transformation strategy – you need to know that there really are upsides and that digital transformation is a critical strategy for you to consider for your business. If a silver lining can be found, it might be that the barriers to using technologies, and improving and experimenting with technology for everyone, from your own teams to your customers, has led to the world becoming more open to trying new things. This shifting mindset can make it just a little bit easier to embark on a journey to transform your organization.
In this unique moment, companies can learn and progress more quickly than ever before. The ways they learn from and adjust to today’s crisis will deeply influence their performance in tomorrow’s changed world. It provides the opportunity to retain greater agility as well as closer ties with customers, employees, and suppliers. And those that are successfully able to make these gains “stick” will be more successful during recovery and beyond.
Now is the time to reassess digital initiatives, whether these initiatives are providing help to employees, connecting with customers or whether they are initiatives that position you for a post-crisis world. Some things may snap back to previous form, while others will be forever changed. Playing it safe now, which understandably you might want to do, is probably the worst option.
Change can be daunting, but AWE is here to help. Alberta Women Entrepreneurs is hosting digital transformation webinars to help you gain the knowledge you need to adapt your organization in this increasingly digital world. Click here to learn more.
