On Being Digitally Mature
Digital Transformation is right of passage that every business or organisation must move through in order to become sustainable and to compete in this digital age. Especially since the onset of the pandemic with remote work and hybrid models becoming more and more the norm.
But just changing the tech you use isn't enough. The ultimate goal is Digital Maturity.
So what is Digital Maturity? Let’s get into it.
Dr. Linda Hill is a co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, gets to the heart of Digital transformation and Digital Maturity on the Dare to Lead podcast also this article from the Harvard School of Business about where digital transformation can take you are really great foundational resources if you want to dig deeper.
For now let’s get nerd-tastic about a few of the highlights!
According to Dr. Hill et al. There are six qualities of digitally mature organizations:
An intimate and dynamic understanding of the customer/stakeholder
A culture that’s data-informed, not data-driven
A challenger mindset and willingness to disrupt
Distributed decision-making and co-creation
Continuous experimentation and learning
Ethical decision-making and proactive governance
As you may or may not have notices all of these six qualities centre around the people, not the tech.
Digital Transformation is collaborative and innovative work, which is vulnerable work. So in order for our transformations to truly succeed, we need to create environments where our people know:
who they serve and why
that their contextual expertise is valuable and will be used in conjunction with the data
that they can challenge and question how things are being done, or how information is being presented
that their input is included in decision making and planning
that they can try new ways of doing things
that the people they work with and for are trustworthy
The people who work for and with you are the key to a successful digital transformation. Include them in your journey! Encourage them to do things better than you, and don't be afraid of the complexity more people will bring!
It is this complexity that will allow for elegant solutions to be developed on your behalf.
The global consultancy McKinsey estimates that more than 70% of all digital transformations fail, and I believe this rate is so high because we think technology will solve all of our problems… but really, it's our people who will. If we can just give them the space to do it!