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Global Digital Strategist at DuPont
Digital is One Answer, But Not the Only Answer
Cristian Paun is the global digital strategist at DuPont. A thought leader using AI or IoT to transform ideas into digital business models.
More and more companies are talking about digitalisation like it’s a universal solution to their problems and challenges. The truth is that technology can help companies achieve value and create new revenue streams, but it cannot make poor management practices, processes and procedures better.
In this article, I will analyse a few organisational aspects that need to be addressed before going digital if you want to avoid enhancing current inefficiencies. Equally important, this article will look at the overlap between the strategies involved in organisational change and digital transformation. What does digital and organisational transformation have in common?
Digital transformation, like organisational change, is less about technology and more about people, purpose, change and culture. Before embarking on the long journey of transforming your organisation into a digital powerhouse, here are four key aspects that leadership teams should examine.
1. Clarity: Clarity drives digitalisation, not the other way. Technology without clarity will increase organisational confusion and chaos.
2. Sense and Purpose: Two highly underrated elements of organisational development. These elements can represent the heart and soul of digital transformation.
3. Leading Change: New ways of working need new leadership definitions.
4. Organisational Culture:We cannot have a transformation with the same old behaviours. How digital and cultural transformation should go hand-in-hand.
Clarity Drives Digitalisation (Not the Other Way)
Digitalisation without clarity is like acting without intention it can create more chaos. A good first step before a transformation project could be to ask: how clear is everyone’s mission in the organisation? Look at the isolation level of the leadership teams and the interactions between managers and subordinates.
Sense and Purpose
Digitalisation should not be the purpose, nor will it bring a new purpose for people. It can, however, transparently show the lack of purpose in organisations where the shared narrative is missing. It can also offer major advantages for companies that have already created a common sense of purpose.
The truth is that technology can help companies achieve value and create new revenue streams, but it cannot make poor management practices, processes and procedures better.
Before going digital, companies should generate connections inside the organisation in order to clarify what they try to achieve together, how they want to create a lasting impact and how they want to contribute to a cause bigger than themselves.
Leading Change
Change is everywhere inside your organisation and outside. Digital transformation, disruptive technologies (AI, IoT, etc.), and new digital business models are just a few examples. But these technologies will not eliminate bottlenecks, change mindsets, or make people accept change.
Digital is changing the way we work and the way we operate. It can also be a disruption if leaders don’t spend the time to guide people on what is changing, what is not changing, how they can play a better role and how they can help the company stay relevant for the next five or ten years.
Organisational Culture
When a company’s leadership spends too much time defining structures, procedures and rules instead of actually observing people and understanding their behaviour, there will be a significant difference between expectations and reality or planning and delivery.
In organisations where culture is not understood, shared and lived, digital transformation can become a shiny tool for leaders to look at new processes, new architectures, and new applications instead of helping the people in front of them take the necessary steps to improve the organisation.
