The trap that many corporations are falling into is the belief that digital transformation is viewed as mostly a technological thing. They think that they can hire a bunch of software engineers or outsource to development companies and that'll solve their digital transformation issues. That couldn’t be further from the truth as there’s a human side to digital transformation.
Their aspiration to be a Silicon Valley-type tech company that has a mix of entrepreneurism, agility and speed makes them believe that tech is the end all be all solution.
And while technology is disruptive to the business, that is not disruptive innovation. That is actually a purposeful re-imagining of how you structure and manage your work. It's recognizing that the real disruptions are external to the company mostly in the form of pandemics, ransomware attacks, supply shocks, energy grid collapses, the big quit etc.
What COVID should have taught us is that that's the new norm. These disruptions that are going to continue to ripple across our economies and ripple across the business is the new norm. All the companies that are sitting around waiting to return to the new normal will fail. Those companies that continue to attempt top-down transformations or reorganizations will continue to just shift, move around deck chairs on the Titanic, to coin a phrase.
So the question becomes immediately is how do you start exploring in the core?
