Accustomed as we are to constantly referring to research on trendy disciplines such as customer experience, competitive intelligence, and digital transformation, we often find ourselves caught in the crossfire: on the one hand, there is a veritable army of surveys and studies that support the progressive success of incorporating agile technologies and new cultures into the business game; on the other, an equally broad front of data that questions the successful evolution of companies into new areas. So where does that leave us? Are we moving forward or backward? Has the spark of transformation been correctly ignited... or is it just a spark that will inevitably be extinguished?
A similar sentiment is expressed by one of the most respected authors on innovation linked to digital transformation, John Mancini, former president of the Association for Information Intelligence Management (AIIM), who in a recent and valuable post on CMS Wire has identified some of these contradictions and has sided with those who believe that the adoption of certain disciplines such as digital transformation is far from something to celebrate. He has also contributed his view on the causes behind this failure.
Let's look at some figures similar to those we have already discussed on occasion in these pages:
- For 8 out of 10 organizations, it is imperative to be a digital business... But 3 out of 4 have serious problems getting the right information about the right process to the right worker.
- Three out of four consider information governance to be "important" or "critical"... But three out of four also acknowledge that their information governance policies are anything but robust.
- Half of companies identify automation controllers as "key" to their business, but for almost three-quarters of companies, simple integration of technologies for ERP or CRM solutions is itself a problem.
- While almost everyone agrees that information management needs to be modernized to address the chaos, six out of ten companies see a problem in migrating content and data to more modern systems.
"The painful gap between Digital Transformation dreams and Digital Transformation realities," says Mancini, is reflected in a McKinsey analysis with the following statement: "...the painful reality is that most transformations fail. Research shows that 70% of large-scale complex change programs fail to achieve their stated objectives. Common difficulties include lack of employee commitment, inadequate management support, poor or non-existent cross-functional collaboration, and lack of accountability. Furthermore, sustaining the impact of a transformation typically requires a significant reset in mindset and behavior, something few leaders know how to achieve."
Not without reason, the author considers the famous opening lines of Charles Dickens' novelA Tale of Two Cities to be entirely relevant: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness." Far from allowing ourselves to be swept away by a litany of pessimism and helplessness, we take note of the causes he identifies in the failure to implement digital transformation programs:
1. First, the incorporation of unstructured or semi-structured data at a much faster rate than technology can handle. We are talking about a 4.2-fold increase over current levels in just two years, with 60% of the information that companies' average technological capabilities do not know how to handle.
2. The lack of understanding on the part of corporate management bodies regarding technological disruption has led many leaders to fail to assign responsibilities to their IT departments and managers. It is time to "empower" them above and beyond technological certifications based solely on external suppliers.
3. The concept of "disruption" in a wide range of industries means that costly campaigns focused on flooding the entire market must be abandoned. Demographic and behavioral changes are incompatible with applying the same old formulas to new technologies.
4. Repeating it over and over again does not make it any less true, so it is worth emphasizing it once more. Any successful business automation initiative must address three factors: people, processes, and technology, in that order. One of the most important critical success factors is knowing your employees: what motivates and demotivates the workforce. Without that, any digital transformation is doomed to failure.
5. Initiatives cannot be imposed hierarchically by a management team that does not understand its own digital maturity. If this happens, there will be a mismatch between good intentions and actual capabilities.
Digital transformation is notinherently doomed to success or failure. The apparent contradictions between the frenzy caused by the continuous adoption of initiatives and the often disappointing results are not found in digital transformation itself, but rather in the incorporation of technologies and processes without the necessary internal cultural change to be able to realize their full potential.
Image: @iamsherise on Unsplash
