How is your tansformation?
Digital Transformation… The New Buzz Word
Since the turn of the century, and indeed, even in the decade before, all organisations could talk about was digital transformation. It has quickly become the buzzword of recent times; it has also become the ultimate source of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). As a company, you were either
‘doing’ your digital transformation, or planning it, or potentially doing both of these things while still trying to figure out what digital transformation really meant for you, or even if it was right.
In the midst of this frenzied activity, though, few have stopped to ask the most important question: how do you ensure your digital transformation actually succeeds?
On this point, there’s a little less buzz.
What Percentage of Digital Transformation Fail?
A lot less, actually, if you care to acknowledge the fact that many digital transformations fail.
The number that fail is a point of controversy. Some online sources claim that only 20% of transformations fail completely, with some achieving at least some level of success. Others, however, are a lot more pessimistic. The Harvard Business Review, for example, says that between 70 and 95% of all digital transformations fail.
Regardless of where the numbers really lie, the most important question is: why?
Here at FDG Consulting, we’ve had the pleasure of working with many of Australia’s most complex and well-known organisations to try to uncover the reasons why this occurs. And in our many years in this field, we’ve discovered what we like to call the ‘secret’ behind successful digital change management programs.
And we’d like to share that secret with you here.
THIS IS THE SECRET BOX
You’ll find our secrets in these boxes.
Unlock the rest by downloading our full whitepaper
What is the secret?
Peter Drucker, one of the world’s most famous management theorists and the creator of the SMART acronym, once said:
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Here at FDG, we find Drucker’s quote particularly relevant to digital change management. Essentially, while change management teams are doing their absolute best with the resources available to them, they are operating largely with yesterday’s logic. That is, they are using change approaches from the past and applying them to digital, and it usually doesn’t work.
Our ‘secret’, then, is to work at pace, applying models, theories and ideas drawn from modern project management and digital development itself, with the express goal of uniting the business on the core purpose of the change and taking everyone on the journey, all while inspiring joy and trust along the way.
We do so through a series of steps, which we’ll outline below. These steps may or may not form part of your current change practice, but if they don’t, don’t worry: we’ll be happy to provide you with more detail if required.
Also, if you’re short on time (and let’s be honest, which change practitioner or digital executive isn’t?), then you can scan the document below to look for our top secrets/tips. They’ll look like the below.
- Step 1: UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEMS THE BUSINESS LEADERS ARE TRYING TO SOLVE
Throughout our time working with numerous digital product development teams here at FDG, we’ve formed the view that product development teams are, indeed, geniuses. The diversity of features and functions we’ve seen is truly breathtaking.
The products we’ve seen developed are so beautiful, and so interesting, that we’ve delighted in playing with them for hours.
But do these incredible products solve the business problem they were designed to fix? Often, they don’t. And even more often, the leaders themselves have lost sight of what that problem was they wanted resolved, and what it will mean for the end user.
Regardless of where an organisation is in their digital transformation process, the benefits of digitising should be clear: digitising should be able to make things easier and more seamless, and ultimately, it should save employees (or customers) time, or alternatively, create new revenue streams. Before any digital change initiative kicks off, it’s important to align the product team on the goals to ensure the product can actually deliver, and to ensure all stakeholders understand why it was created in the first place.
SECRET 1: Benefits realisation doesn’t need to be complex. Does your digital product save time or make your organisation money? How does it do this?
- Step 2: ACKNOWLEDGE PAIN POINTS AND FIRST ADVOCATE TO REMEDY THE MOST PRESSING ISSUES
Ask any digital transformation executive what their biggest pain points are, and they’ll typically talk about the product. If only the product could do this, or that, they’ll say. Or perhaps if the team could just develop the product that bit faster, we’d be able to roll it out at double the pace and we’d see the benefits stream in before our very eyes, they’ll murmur.
But the surprising thing that we’ve discovered is that the most pressing pain points are often nothing to do with the product, and everything to do with the people.
We use various models to conduct high-level stakeholder analyses and what we’ve found is that overcoming not just a fear of change, but a fear of failure, is often one of the most pressing issues a digital change team needs to resolve.
SECRET 2: Ensure you conduct stakeholder analysis with the express purpose of identifying your most pressing issues with digital change and adoption.
- Step 3: DESCRIBE GOALS JUST ENOUGH TO INSPIRE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION
The digital transformation leaders that we work with are nothing short of inspiring. We’ve seen Powerpoint presentations, with slides numbering in mid-50s, describing the ideal future state where robot unicorns have replaced the entire front line, the few head office people that are left only need to work seven minutes a day, and everyone else is enjoying piña coladas in the Caribbean.
We’re joking, but we know you know what we mean.
These visionary slide decks are useful, but unfortunately, they rarely mean much outside of the executive boardroom.
What everyone else needs is a short, sharp, and meaningful description of what the change means for them … and
why they should care.
Ultimately, for a lot of people in organisations, digital transformation feels like – although it isn’t necessary – more work. No one wants to do more work, so when communicating change, it’s essential that you describe the project’s goals in a way where each stakeholder group can personally relate to the benefits.
SECRET 3: When communicating digital change, it’s essential that, for every stakeholder group, you can answer the question: “What’s in this for me?”
- Step 4: UNDERSTAND WHO IS IMPACTED, HOW THEY’RE IMPACTED, AND HOW THEY CURRENTLY
WORK
We recently worked on a change management initiative with one of Australia’s largest technology providers.
Although the change team had, by and large, done a great job of managing the change, we were called in as a standoff
had effectively ensued with the sales team. In a nutshell, the new digital product that had been released was going to
profoundly change how they completed their weekly reporting, but no one had told them … and of course, they
weren’t happy about it.
With digital change initiatives, far too often, teams focus on the end user and their experience. While this is
important, there are often a multitude of dependencies (read: people) who are also impacted, and it’s critical to also understand who these people are and how the change will impact them.
This is because, as all good change practitioners know, no one is more likely to be a change detractor than someone who woke up, went to work, and discovered everything was different.
SECRET 4: The people impacted by your digital change will always be broader than the end user. Ensure you consider everyone in your processes, including how the change will impact how they work.
- Step 5: ALIGN WITH OTHER ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGIC PRIORITIES
A couple of years ago, we worked on a digital change project with one of Australia’s leading finance providers. While reviewing an (admittedly, very elaborate) communication and training plan, we asked the project sponsor how many other digital products the end users would be exposed to in the coming year.
‘About fifty?’ He said.
Fifty. If the end users had to understand, learn about, and ideally, adopt fifty new digital products, how on earth were they going to be able to make time for that, as well as doing their day jobs?
Digitising is, in and of itself, a strategic imperative, but within that, an organisation needs to have priorities. When rolling out digital change, it’s important to align to those priorities. If end users don’t know what they are, they will likely get lost in a sea of communication, and this may harm the reputation of digital change going forward.
SECRET 5: What are the organisation’s strategic priorities? Ensure that you align your digital change program with these, so end users know how to prioritise.
- Step 6: INVESTIGATE AND REMOVE BARRIERS TO CHANGE
Paradoxically, within a digital transformation, the biggest barrier to change is the product itself. Why? Because more often than not, it will be developed and released in an agile way, and testing, iterating, and updating will need to occur simultaneously with a rollout.
This creates real headaches for digital change teams. How can they, for example, create training for a product that isn’t ready? How can they communicate what a product does, when the ‘what’ is constantly changing?
We’ve found that the best way to overcome this barrier is to work in-step with the product team in a fully-integrated, agile way.
If not working in an agile way is your barrier, you need to remove it. But it likely won’t be the only barrier, so as part of your process, you need to investigate and remedy any barriers constantly throughout the digital change cycle.
SECRET 6: Barriers to change can often be broken down into three categories: people, process and product. As a change team, you need to continually investigate what these barriers are and ensure you remove them.
- Step 7: DYNAMICALLY COMMUNICATE (AND TRAIN) THE FUTURE STATE ACROSS PROCESSES, SYSTEMS, PEOPLE AND END USERS
The working language in the majority of large corporates in Australia is English. Yet, despite this universality, we’ve found that it feels as if different teams speak different languages … and if you’ve ever worked with a product development team, you’ll know exactly what we mean.
Whether you’re in a product team, and you’re throwing around acronyms like AC and UAT, or you’re in the L&D team, and you’re talking about ADDIE, every team in every organisation has not only their own acronyms, but their own unique perspectives, concerns, and ideas of what success should look like.
We’ve found that one of the most important ‘secrets’ when it comes to successful digital change is to ensure that we understand all of these things about different stakeholders, and speak to them in their ‘language’.
SECRET 7: What does success look like to different stakeholders and teams? How do they work, what do they care about? Ensure that you take all of this into consideration when partnering with different groups within your organisation.
- Step 8: INSPIRE JOY AND TRUST
If you Google ‘change quotes’, you’ll find a proliferation of some of the world’s best thinkers telling you how difficult change is. Change is hard, no one wants it, people want it but they don’t want to personally change – and if you’ve ever worked in change management, you’ll know all of these things to be true.
And that’s why it is critically important to inspire joy and engender trust along the digital change journey.
The ‘how’ of exactly what we do to ensure we do this for every client we work with is a closely guarded secret … so much so that we don’t want to share it here. But the general feedback from our clients has been that the uplift that we’ve created in mood and motivation towards the change has been a true game-changer for their programs.
SECRET 8: Communicating clearly and simply isn’t enough. Your leaders need to inspire joy and engender trust in your program and your ability to deliver. Not sure how to do this? Ask us how.
The Trillion Dollar Question
By 2026 – just two years from now – the worldwide expenditure on digital transformations is set to reach $3.4 trillion, according to Statistica. Beyond this, experts are predicting that digitisation will be the ‘silver bullet’ for organisations, helping to create efficiencies, uplift productivity, and ultimately, provide solutions to our world’s most pressing problems.
But none of this will occur unless we can ensure digital change programs succeed. As experts in the digital change space, we’ve successfully delivered programs for Football Australia, Optus, NAB, Team Global Express, and AFG. among others.
And we’d love to help you succeed too.
