Digital transformation today is taking place at a pace that is 20-25x faster than pre-2020. Changing at unprecedented speed comes with inherent risk, and in this case, digital transformation is largely treated by leadership and operations teams as a series of independent IT projects instead of realizing its full potential as a driver of competitive advantage.
7 Steps for True Digital Transformation
HBR’s recent webinar, 7 Imperatives for a Successful Digital Transformation, highlights the need for board-level vision in any successful digital transformation. The authors stress that “digitizing is not the same as digital transformation. The former is mostly about enabling business as usual and ‘staying in the game,’ while the latter is about building real, long-term competitive advantage to succeed.”
HBR outlines seven steps to successful digital transformation:
- Reimagine your company's place in the world
- Create value through ecosystems
- Reimagine your organization to enable a new model of value creation
- Reinvent the social construct with your people
- Build privileged insights into your customers
- Reposition your leadership team
- Disrupt your own leadership approach
True digital transformation begins with a real understanding of the landscape. Look beyond your existing operations and consider the unmet needs of customers and address new markets. Turning this vision into true organizational change requires leadership to embrace:
- Transparency
- Customer experience
- Data-drive and outcome-driven management style
- Focus on people and how they use technology
- A willingness to disrupt yourself. Don't just digitize your existing business model and processes
- Openness to partnering. Create an ecosystem that allows you to fulfill your customer's needs. You don't have to do it alone.
Maintain Alignment with a Strong Value Proposition
Leaders looking to drive digital transformation in business must start at the top: creating board-level down alignment around a vision. Launch’s positioning process puts a stake in the ground by declaring your competitive advantage 3-5 years out after exploring market needs and the competitive landscape. This value proposition helps to drive the real change necessary at every level.
While keeping up with the speed of change sounds daunting, initiating effective change management across the enterprise will provide every employee with the tools they need to adapt with confidence.
The change required to achieve this vision runs deep. A functional org chart is no longer enough when today’s businesses require true cross-functional collaboration to successfully transform. Enterprise-wide change management offers a full-system, employee-specific framework to improve your odds at achieving success. With strong sponsorship from leaders and the utilization of a specific framework for implementing changes across the company, success rates for all projects and changes can be significantly increased.
We help to support digital transformation and organizational change for market leaders around the world. Contact us to discuss your unique challenges.
