5 insights for shaping your Digital Transformation journey

I recently had the inspiring experience of representing EY in Columbia Business School’s Digital Business Leadership Program (DBLP). While it is always difficult to make time for such an intensive business immersion, the rapid pace of change in the Digital age made this commitment well worth it.  Business leaders from major global enterprises, digital native entrepreneurs, and the well researched faculty, spent six months together sharing perspectives and exploring next wave strategies. 

Check out a few of my initial observations in the video link below prepared by the Business School for their program:

 https://youtu.be/Wc5kjVTGpTU

As Digital natives like Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon (along with the plethora of fast growing start ups) define the new norms of today's businesses; legacy companies are faced with the challenge of crafting the right approach to keep pace. Many learn quickly that there is a big difference between deploying a new digital solution versus truly becoming a digital organization. On the one hand, we see brick and mortar companies like Walmart acquiring the digital native company Bonobos to better compete in the online digital game. On the other hand we see Amazon, an established online leader, acquiring whole Foods to extend its customer ownership goals with a physical presence. And in between these two bookends lies numerous iterations of the journey to the Digital promised land.

Here are five insights that may appear simple at first glance, but actually reflect what many first movers have learned through trial and error on the front lines.

(1) Being Digital is a mindset that transcends any one technology. It starts with a relentless focus on taking advantage of new developments in data, analytics, and automation to curate powerfully personalized and anticipatory customer experiences. This mindset also understands that cost cutting is merely the tip of the iceberg and should not be the primary driver of your transformation initiatives. Rather, owning the data that creates increasingly extensive views of the various parts of our customers lives appears to be emerging as the most powerful asset a company can have.

(2) Being Digital should not be your company’s purpose, BUT your digital strategy must boldly enable activation of your purpose; including how you inclusively serve your employees, your community, and the environment, in addition to providing positive shareholder returns. Not only do our employees and customers demand to be understood, heard, and seen with more precision, they also want it to be known that the values of a company matter just as much as the quality of the products and services they offer. With technology comes more transparency both ways and companies must authentically and consistently demonstrate their commitment to being good citizens of the world as much as they demonstrate their ability to refine their commercial offerings.

(3) Digital transformation is still a business transformation and many of the tried and true classic principles are still relevant. The winners in this game will have found the right balance of agility, innovation, and high touch human engagement along with the structure, governance, and change management often proven critical in muti-year programs. Deploying the latest shiny object without the proper focus on transformation can lead to sub-optimal consequences. An agile approach allows for bite size wins in the near term that build buy-in and momentum, while allowing you to fail fast and early when the consequences are still manageable enough for them to be considered "learning".

(4) Your Digital transformation will only be as effective as your operating model allows. Classic definitions of departments, business units, and decision rights will give way to new paradigms all centered on quickly anticipating and responding to customer needs. It is not good enough to put up a digital store front if your back end processes are still constrained by classic operating models. The key is to define a roadmap that allows for all the moving parts to transition together whether that means small pieces over time, setting up a new operating entity, or a combination of the above.

(5) Intelligent Automation is estimated to conservatively replace upwards of 30% of work being done today by humans. In spite of this, humans will become an increasingly important part of the loop and will have an opportunity to focus more on innovation and creating delightful human experiences. Technology is a great substitute for executing tasks and providing insight quickly but we are still, thankfully, a long ways off from robots replacing the feel of a human relationship.

This was truly a transformative experience, and thank you to David Rogers, Bob Dorf, Rita McGrath, and the faculty at Columbia Business School for facilitating such a powerful and innovative exchange!