Digital transformation means adopting digital technology to fundamentally change businesses, services, and experiences in our communities. Everyone is talking about digital transformation. Some organizations, like Nike, Celero, and BCIT, are making it happen for their customers and stakeholders. Accelerated by the global pandemic, how we work is evolving and there is a rapidly growing need to understand the concepts of digital privacy, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and the role of platforms and social tools in business. Whether you are running a small business or a cooperative platform with tens of thousands of member-owners, delivering a successful digital transformation is more about human capabilities than finding the coolest technical widget. Here are three essential ingredients for successful digital transformation.

Customer-centricity

Digital transformation must meet the needs of your most important stakeholders. By applying human skills such as empathy, curiosity, relationship building, critical thinking, sense-making, and design, teams that lead digital transformation will uncover the greatest needs of customers, members, and colleagues. This approach draws from Clay Christensen’s renowned “jobs to be done” theory, which, according to Forbes’s Stephen Wunker recommends that “Rather than looking just at what people buy, examine the needs that arise during their lives. Sometimes the job is much broader than the product or service that is bought.”

It is critical for the digital solutions created through a transformation reflect and match the needs of stakeholders, as opposed to what folks tell you they want. For example, wanting a milkshake and needing to feel full during a morning commute are vastly different things. Needing a variety of customization, bite-sized learning options is different from wanting “customized sales training”.

Purposeful simplicity

Once the needs and wants of your stakeholders are uncovered, decision-makers often become overwhelmed by the options for transformation and are not sure how or where to get started. Other firms fail by trying to deliver everything for everyone, which results in a variety of mediocre digital solutions that meet some stakeholders’ needs, but do not delight any group. For example, financial institutions that dedicate energy on digital access and engagement will train their focus on customer needs; however, hybrid or work from anywhere programs (required for employee retention and engagement) could draw attention to another type of digital transformation. It is nearly impossible to make all three of these things simple.

Organizations can find their focus for digital transformation by connecting it to why they exist. Pension corporations might focus on economic stability in communities, higher education institutions might focus on enhancing the student experience, and Richard Branson would probably use digital transformation to channel his belief that employees come first.

Agile learning mindset

To make the solutions, tools, and processes of digital transformation stick, employees need to identify as and think like perpetual learners. In their book, The Adaptation Advantage, Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley argue that having an agile learning mindset helps us put digital transformation in the context of the market and our work:

“You will no longer have a job processing just a piece of work; you will need to know how that work fits into the broader organization, from product through business model. You will need to understand how your organization creates and captures value, and how your activities contribute to that value creation.”

Two things from McGowan and Shipley’s work resonate profoundly. First, an agile learning mindset means cultivating autonomy and agency in people so that they can make sound decisions at pace. Second, the ability to unlearn is almost as important as the ability to learn quickly – people who can confidently let go of “the way we’ve always done things” will be more likely to possess the capability and capacity to usher in digital transformation for their communities.

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