Transformation Goals

There are many terms used to describe transformation. Digital, agile, product, technology... It helps to be clear about what the goal of a transformation is. Broadly speaking, there are two terms that I use regularly: digital transformation and innovation transformation.

While digital transformation most often aims to make an organization more digital, what that really means is implementing digital processes that make non-digital processes obsolete. The hope is to become faster and cheaper as an organization. I had a CEO who kept saying, "It has to be all digital," meaning that what is a paper-based process today has to be turned into a digital process. Get rid of printing, mailing, scanning and use digital documents instead. His main goal was to make existing processes less painful, faster and cheaper. If you look behind the shiny PowerPoint slides of digital transformation, you can see this mindset in many organizations undergoing transformation. These organizations are limiting themselves by thinking about doing what they already do today - just in a more cost-effective way. Go digital and more automated instead of paper and manual.

There is a different way of thinking. What if we challenged the way we do things? Instead of just looking at reducing the cost base, how do we keep reinventing ourselves to stay relevant? Moving from one big success in the past that pays our bills to a continuous stream of innovation. How do we enable an organization to use technology to not only do the things they already do more efficiently, but to come up with completely new solutions that win the hearts of our customers and take the organization to the next level of growth. Or to keep it relevant in the first place, while existing offerings lose relevance and to gain the ability to create new ones.

I understand that many leaders tend to defend what they have and try to make a career out of it. I speak to leaders who have bigger ambitions for their organizations. The ambition to move them out of the cash cow mentality and into an innovation mindset. It requires organizations to accept that the success rates of traditional (if not outdated) ways of working in big blast, long up-front planned projects are not very high. Transformation often means moving from a project culture to a product culture. Understanding that people's work is not about meeting deadlines, but about finding new, promising solutions and bringing them to market successfully: innovating.

To show an organization what this shift in mindset means for them, I use the pilot team approach. Dedicate one team to work differently than the rest and understand what that means for the organization. Become innovative again, but also assess whether you are ready for a fundamental change.