We all grew up hearing “Life is not a dress rehearsal”. There are actual consequences to getting it wrong. In the midst of the current uncertainty, many business executives and business owners are currently coping with those consequences. Sometimes we imagine our challenges can be addressed in the near future as if conflicting priorities and procrastination will solve themselves.
Sometimes we have a valid reason–after all, this pandemic was a black swan event. In life and in business, you cannot change what you cannot control. Moreover, you cannot change your past choices; but all of us have the power to change the future right now. It starts with having full awareness, gaining clarity and having a sense of urgency to swiftly take focused actions toward a vision.
With mounting pressure to survive and to thrive in these rough waters, the need for digital transformation is becoming critical for your organization. IDC predicts that over the next 3 years, digital transformation growth will reach 35% year-on-year
Here are 4 factors to make this transition personal to each key stakeholder in your business:
- Make it a strategic priority. Let it be an enterprise-wide priority and making accountability for who is responsible for what clear is critically important, but companies can follow several other steps to affect the kind of change they desire.
- Ruthlessly focus on a clear set of objectives. Whether you’re transforming an existing model or starting from scratch, leaders must reach a consensus on the best path to pursue.
- Be bold when setting the scope. Successful digital transformations are 1.5 times more likely than others to be enterprise-wide in scale.
This will also help business executives recognize the biggest bang from their technology investments. If you’re stuck on incremental changes, you may miss the big move you might have seen.
- Embrace adaptive design. The days of upfront investment requirements and rigid KPIs are over. Adaptive design enables CXOs to pursue monthly or even weekly tweaks to the transformation strategy, including reallocating resources. Both HR and information systems must adhere to agile methodologies. Mistakes happen. Encourage progress rather than perfectionism. Counterexamples serve us well to learn the lessons from others which may be further along the road ahead. This prevents perfectionism and encourages actions and responsiveness to feedback.
We see this adaptability ingrained in the design of successful transformations. Business leaders reporting success were more than three times more likely to facilitate monthly adjustments to strategy.
- Aim at progress, not perfection: learning from your mistakes and the mistakes of others. Counterexamples serve us well to learn the lessons from others which may be further along the road ahead. This prevents perfectionism and encourages actions and responsiveness to feedback.
Regardless, having a strong bias toward change is critical. I hope these tips will help you create digital transformation within your organization.
—
