Who Said Digital Transformation Was Such a Good Thing?

Like so many buzzwords, Digital Transformation has been used to label almost every kind of IT project imaginable, much the way “cloud” was used to describe, well, everything! To distinguish and differ

A major software provider in our industry once informed its partner community that it was time for them to achieve “business model transformation.”

Sounded like a good thing, right?

They were surprised when many of their partners replied with something on the order of, “I’ve been running this business and growing successfully for 20 years! Why do I need to transform? What do I need to transform?”

Each such response was some version of “It ain’t broke, so why fix it?”

The Pace of Change

Remember when we all started migrating our customers to the Cloud? Many of them were in a rush. They wanted to move off their own premises equipment as fqst as possible.

We counselled them to slow down, migrate gradually, one workload at a time starting with the least critical workloads to minimize the impact of potential mistakes or failures. Plan the move, then execute. We were basically telling them that they didn’t want to instantly transform from on-prem to cloud. Gradual transition would benefit them far more.

And it did.

What we all learned then, if we hadn’t learned it earlier when rolling out networks, applications, desktop deployments, and many other initiatives, was to take the time, move with deliberate slowness, to assure a higher quality transition. The pace of the change we were helping clients accomplish was a very important issue.

Defining “Transformation”

Depending on your favorite dictionary, the definition of the word “transformation” varies very little.

More than one defines it as, “a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.” Others take it further to describe, “a complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone, especially so that that thing or person is improved.”

Note the difference between “dramatic” and “complete.” The latter suggests that nothing of the original state remains. Jekyll becomes Hyde. Lon Chanel becomes the Wolfman. Cars and trucks become giant battle robots. Complete change.

So who ever said that “transformation” of any kind was always a good thing? We see valiant politicians lose their way and transform into madmen (and madwomen). We see beautiful, vibrant cities transformed into piles of rubble. Transformation is not always what we’re looking for, and it’s not always a positive, complete change.

Words that business executives might associate with “transformation” include “disruption”, “interruption”, “disorder”, “disturbance”, and “confusion.”

What Do Clients Really Want?

While everybody is famously resistant to it, most clients want change. The specific change they want is improvement. Improvement to their operations. Improvement to their company morale. Improvement to their bottom line.

If you’ve ever encountered resistance when pitching a Digital Transformation initiative, it may be that your client is intimidated by the implied breadth of change it suggests.

You might consider referring to your initiative as “Digital Evolution.” Now you’re saying that you’re going to build upon the excellent foundation your client has already achieved. That’s better than implying that what they’ve done needs to be ripped out and replaced, no?

If you’re addicted to alliteration as I am, perhaps “Digital Development” appeals to you. Your plan is to take what’s there and develop it further.

That, of course, opens up “Digital Improvement” which is what I suspect most people are really talking about when they say Digital Transformation.

The Digital Misnomer

Perhaps the most important consideration in all these semantics, is to remain true to what you’re actually trying to accomplish when you propose projects like these.

It’s not a hardware refresh. That’s called an upgrade. Perhaps a forklift upgrade, but an upgrade nonetheless.

It’s not a software upgrade. That could be called a high-likelihood-of disaster event. Hopefully not. But its certain not a transformation. Same software, different version.

It’s really a worthwhile improvement of business processes leveraging automation and related technologies to make them better, faster, and less prone to error. Properly implemented, it should also free humans up from dull, repetitive, or simplistic tasks that are just downright stultifying. Then we can elevate them to more interesting, more engaging, and more rewarding work. Now that may end up being transformative for them, but that’s not my point here.

My point is that we should really be referring to these initiatives as “Business Transformation” or “Business Process Transformation” or evolution, or development, or improvement. While the tools used to achieve it may be digital in nature, they are not the object of the improvement. People and the processes they perform are.

For the Brave and the Bold

Before I implore you to share your thoughts and observations about this, let me bring you back several years to the era of “Digital Disruption.”

People use the example of Uber, which completely disrupted the way people obtain and consume local transportation, disrupting that industry profoundly.

Another substantial one is the one that has digitally disrupted basically everything from shopping, to web services, to spaceflight, Amazon.

As long as people have imaginations, and the inner desire to innovate, opportunities to disrupt industries will continue to abound. These really are digital disruptions, because the object really is the tool with which we’re creating the change.

Just about every digital disruption we’ve seen has ended up in a vast improvement to the industry it disrupted and how it serves people. While we’re all thinking about our next Business Improvement, let’s remember to indulge the brave and bold part of our nature and consider the possibilities to disrupt and thereby improve whole industries.