Some Lies About Digital Transformation

Every time I read about digital transformation, I come across claims that spring from approaches which only hold up on paper. Smartphone penetration figures in Spain -above 80%- and the resulting concern among traditional companies about setting out on the road to Digital Transformation are becoming a focus of attention for the big traditional consultancies. Are these big traditional consultancies the best prepared to lead this change?

Traditional consultancies have in the past been the great experts on corporate culture and strategy, and that is an indisputable fact. It made no difference whether it was a reorganization, a new process or the planning of a new website. There they were and there they are. My question is: would you still trust them with your digital transformation?

We all accept that the arrival of new ways of doing things in digital has changed the rules of the game and has even thrown these big consultancies off their stride, because for a long time they considered digital a secondary focus -a thing for geeks. The old departmental structures were designed by these traditional consultancies. Do they now have the authority to “redesign” digital transformation? Wouldn't that be entrusting something new to the same people as always?

I have read many papers on digital transformation and conceptually well-built documents signed by these big consultancies. And I have also read claims that sound like: “Here goes, in case I get it right”. In this post I want to go over, in the form of "digital lies", some of the claims and recommendations I have been reading over the last few years, months and days:

The road to digital transformation consists of adopting agile working methodologies. Do we really think that transforming digitally comes down solely to changing the way people relate to one another inside a company? There are great advantages in adopting agile working methodologies and it is only the beginning of a long road. If I personally had to prioritize the big steps towards digital transformation, I would start with selecting teams on the basis of relational skills. Leading teams in this new environment is the great challenge. In an earlier post, I ran through the difficulties facing this new digital leader Is everyone in large organizations ready for this new undertaking? There is no sense in keeping the old rigidities in corporate cultures, perpetuating "dead-wood" profiles and, on top of that, claiming that by adopting a new working methodology we have already covered half the road. I am afraid it is necessary to get rid of those profiles who obstruct change as a form of self-defense.

Digital transformation means working in the cloud. Is it really not possible to start on the road to digital transformation without betting 100% on cloud computing processes? There is no doubt that the flexibility of working with data in the cloud is an option that must form part of the digital strategy, and it is also true that most regulators are not making this process easier across the different verticals. There is probably still some road of coexistence to travel between traditional back-offices and processes related to customer experience, mostly cloud-based (content personalization, campaign automation, connection between apps and websites, on and off analytics, …). Perhaps the right decision in this initial process is coexistence.

_Encourage the creation of online communities among employees to improve the communication process._How does creating online communities sound to you? Personally it reminds me of an old TV ad: "Guay del Paraguay, el hombre desactualizado de Jazz..." [an old Spanish telecom ad whose already dated slang mocked "the out-of-date man"] I promise you I have read this recommendation in one of the posts of a big consultancy. Of course I believe in generating new communication formats based on social media. And of course I firmly believe in the advantages of transforming the way big companies approach social media. Is it really possible to change the information flows in large companies purely by applying social media to internal communication? There is no doubt that social media can be used as a communication catalyst and as a collaborative lever between departments in a large organization. And I also believe that some earlier step needs to be included. Is there a natural communication flow among all the employees of an organization, or do the rigidities of the chain of command still prevail over everything else? Does the focus of the digital strategy come first, or do departmental interests still exist in internal communication? How many CEOs of large companies have taken the step of exposing their profile on social networks (without being impersonated)?

Create <> business models as part of digital transformation. Innovate before a startup does? The great advantage small competitors have is that they will always challenge the leaders of every industry. They lose nothing by breaking the rules of the game. If we happen to think that starting the digital transformation process means creating business models that break with industry standards inside the big players, we will be creating a toxic divide between winners and losers within the organization itself. Is that space of conflict worth it against the unlikely event of producing a winning model? I believe the greatest learning for a large organization that invests in new service models competing with its traditional ways is knowing when to pull the plug on projects that aren't working. And also having the courage to admit that I made a bet and I got it wrong. Knowing how to spread that spirit of tolerance for error is, in my judgment, more worthwhile than hypothetically striking gold with disruptive models.

I believe that the introduction of emotional skills into teams is the first step towards that digital transformation. I already reflected on these skills in 7 skills of a geek .
My big doubt is whether the big traditional consultancies have internally adopted the badly named "soft skills”. I have my doubts. This concept of “soft skills” was quite possibly coined by one of them, I'd stake my hand on it.
The story goes that a mother asked Mahatma Gandhi to recommend to her son that he stop eating sugar. Gandhi told the mother to come back with her son a week later. Puzzled, the mother agreed to come back with her son a week later. The following week, Gandhi agreed to make the recommendation to the boy to stop eating sugar. The mother asked, surprised, why he had not made that recommendation the week before if she had come with her son then too. Gandhi answered simply that he personally needed a week to give up sugar himself before making the recommendation to another human being.

Perhaps the road to digital transformation requires large companies to stop entrusting digital change to the same people they have always entrusted their traditional strategy to. It may well be that the big traditional consultancies know how to do their organizational and strategic work like no one else and that, on this digital transformation business, for now and in my judgment, they are working somewhat from hearsay.

This post was originally published on my blog.

Bernardo Crespo is a Digital Strategist as well as an Ontological Coach certified by Newfield Network in Bogotá (Colombia). Degree in Business Studies from UCLM and final year of a BA Honours in Management and Economics, University of St Andrews.
Executive Master in Relationship Marketing, CRM and E-Commerce from ICEMD and a lecturer at several business schools in Spain. He worked as digital marketing director of BBVA Spain.

I have discovered and keep discovering the beauty of play applied outside of play #gamification