Step with care and great tact, transformation is a Great Balancing Act!

Digital transformation has been for a long time a buzz word. Today, this buzz word has been unravelled: It’s the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises. As discussed in Leading Digital, there are nine foundational building blocks to digital transformation success:

Digital advances have been largely utilised across industries to improve the use of traditional technologies, customer relationships, internal processes and value propositions – yet digital transformation has not been easy to achieve.

No matter the magnitude of technologies and structures implemented, it’s the people who bring it to life. Let us then start this Great Balancing Act:

Step 1: Start with Why

Simon Sinek in his book Start with Why advocates that in order to differentiate and lead – in any industry or area – an organisation needs to have a clear sense and statement of their ‘why’.  A clear purpose and authenticity can lead to more innovation and influence as it inspires people to achieve remarkable things. With examples from Martin Luther King Jr. to Steve Jobs and the Wright Brothers, Sinek concludes that all have one thing in common: a balanced Golden Cycle.

The Golden Cycle states that ‘why’ you do what you do, should be in total balance with ‘how’ you do it so it can be evidently seen in ‘what’ you do. Having a strong ‘why’ makes it more difficult for others to copy your pattern – people don’t buy ‘what’ you do but they buy ‘why’ you do it – the idea, the feeling and the value.

Tip to remember: Successfully communicating your ‘why’ through your ‘how’ and ‘what’ is the key. Always be authentic!

Digital Transformation Element targeted: Transformation of Customer Experience through better customer understanding, enhanced sales pitches and customer touch points.

Step 2: Choose your giving style wisely

As Adam Grant stated in his research, Given and Take, success depends on how we approach interactions with people. There are three styles of social interaction:

As most people expected – givers usually land at the bottom of the success ladder, whereas matchers and takers are somewhere a little above them. But who’s at the top? According to Adam’s findings it is the givers again. From actual case studies across various industries – business, sport and creative – Adam concludes that givers succeed in the very unique way of networking, collaborating, communicating and influencing. They create a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them and giving life to the right environment for people to learn and innovate. Being a giver is contagious.

Tip to remember: No one can burn out as a giver, as long as they see the impact they create!

Digital Transformation Element targeted: Transformation of Operational Processes through automation, worker enablement and upgraded performance management.

Step 3: Mind the gap: digital transformation

We have entered an era where the shift from products to services is real. In this shift, however, most of the organisations stumble on one major gap: digital transformation. Digital transformation is more than what we think it is; it’s a paradigm shift, an added value and the innovation itself!  Let’s travel back to the future to understand this paradigm shift: printing press, steam engines and electricity all have one thing in common, the change they caused in the way humans work and live, and the fact that alongside this, they brought further innovations. Now, let’s come back to present: cloud technology – is our newest paradigm shift which transforms how businesses create value and brings new innovations such as chat boxes and predictive medicine.

The greatest danger for an organisation is to keep the technology as it has always had and never embark on a digital transformation. Only a small proportion of successful digital transformations depend on tech, the majority of them are about change management.

Tip to remember: Leadership Capability is what creates the conditions necessary to drive digital transformation but engaged people is what makes it happen!

Digital Transformation Element targeted: Transformation of Business Models through digital modifications to the business or the creation of new digital businesses, and the digital globalization.

Step once, step twice, step three times – Where do all these lead?

I would like to invite you to a Nintendo ‘history’ game. Since 1889, Nintendo has been jumping from one transformation to another. It started with traditional Japanese playing cards – hanafuda – made possible by the printing press. From there they have consistently used technology from each era to transform their business and become a success symbol of early gaming platforms, such as gaming consoles and mobile gaming devices. Yet they didn’t dwell on the successes, and instead revolutionized mobile gaming with Pokemon Go before launching their first cloud console with the Switch in 2017.

Which steps does the long history of transformation of Nintendo reveal?

Step 1: They took great pride in the ‘why’ they exist – more than ‘how’ they operate – they want to make people play and any new technology is a resource to them. Nintendo did not hesitate to adjust the how and what to the customer needs and to elevate the customer experience.

Step 2: They were not afraid to transform the operational processes by creating the right environment for people to learn and innovate. If they had cared only about liquid crystal displays, and only this way to deliver gaming, every new technology would have been a threat to them. They would have disappeared with the last liquid crystal mobile console.

Step 3: They digitised they business and sustained the digital transformation – meaning that the digital vision is established and communicated successfully. Nintendo is a fantastic example of an organization jumping from one burning platform to the next for more than a century and consistently expanding their market on the way when most of their competitors were going out of business.

Let’s put it in a nutshell – differentiation in its true sense, happens in why and how you do what you do. However, in order to have your ‘why’ successfully communicated within and outside your organisation, givers need to be part of it to generously help and inspire. Energy motivates but charisma inspires, energy is easy to see, measure and copy but not charisma. Lastly, an organisation needs to sustain its digital transformation and capture the potential of a new platform/technology and revolutionise its own industry. That’s where a strong leadership comes on place to drive this change and only well-managed firms are able to constantly identify new ways to redefine the work in the new digital era.

Digital transformation is multidimensional with a series of complex interrelated business transformations and has a strong demand of symbiosis between people and technology – a Great Balancing Act remarkably needed!

Author

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Fjoralba Kodrasi

Fjoralba joined Capgemini Invent in February 2019 and is aligned within the Organisational Dexterity capability of the People & Organisation practice. Having graduated from UCL Bartlett School of Architecture with a master’s degree in Development Administration and Planning, she is now supporting the management of a significant field force operation as part of a programme for a large utilities client.