Tell me you are not digital without telling me you are not digital.
How many of you have worked in environments where technology was completely underestimated? How many of you have felt like there is a lack of understanding of what Digital means in the context of a business? How often have you been in meetings and discussions with people that consider themselves Digital but cannot grasp the technological consequences of their decisions or statements? And how often have you been in arguments or presentations where it’s showcased as references, or companies to look at, the likes of Amazon, Zalando, Google, Apple, etc?
Even though we are in an extremely digital era, the vast majority of the businesses and organizations are still in adoption and transformation phase towards becoming and embracing digital. And what do all of these organizations have in common? Their non-digital roots.
Becoming digital is not about using the latest software and running it on the latest hardware, but rather looking into your organization and identify areas where technology can contribute to your companies success (short-term and long-term), along with a mindset change where technology becomes core and a strategic component of an organization.
Easier said than done, right? When a company comes from a non-tech driven background, this is often very far fetched and too big of a step to make.
But is it really?
Human beings are wired in a way that,whenever there is change, instinctively they resist, as it is perceived as a threat. What this means in the context of an organization, is that there will be a considerable amount of individuals that will not accept this transformation easily, and when these individuals are sitting in leadership roles which are pivotal to this journey, it can create a lot of friction.
Embracing Digital also means you have to change your ways of working.
A great example to this is Ecommerce. If you want to launch a successful online business, you must realize that even though you are selling product — a process that was for centuries done completely on the physical space — you are operating and relying on technology to support and make this process possible digitally.
In order to provide customers with the greatest shopping experience online, you need to combine the knowledge of sales individuals, who understand their customers and analyze their behaviors, with the engineering and technical knowledge of the technology guys, to build those experiences for you. The gap between “business” and “IT” is practically non-existent. Understanding the limitations and potential of technology that is available to us today and how you take advantage of it to achieve your goals, is the biggest element each organization has to win over competition. Tying that to the amount of data that can be collected to understand shopping habits and behavior, the ability (and agility) to react and adapt is crucial to stay relevant and to keep up with the trend.
But when the time comes and discussions begin, there is a statement that pops up quite often: “That will not work in our organization because …”. It’s such a dull and vague statement that shows immediate resistance to change which is justified by the fact that “we are special”. When this happens you know you are in for a treat and that the next days, weeks and months will be filled with meetings, phone calls and discussions whose objective is to simply convince people that they are wrong.
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday’s logic — Peter Drucker
As someone who has been in the digital space for nearly 25 years, I cannot process the assumption that you are not able to adopt modern ways of working or technologies because you are just too different.
I am able to navigate around it to a certain extent, but if there’s something I am quite conscious of at this point of my life is that I am not willing to waste time trying to change people’s heads if they are not willing to or if the organization is not fostering and permitting this mindset switch.
Now, what I find very funny is when these same people refer to companies such as Amazon, Apple or Zalando on their presentations or conversations while being completely oblivious to the fact that these organizations have always had technology at their core and have used it to stand out from the crowd. As Gene Kim says in his The DevOps Handbook book: “Every company is a technology company, regardless of what business they think they’re in” and if you are a digital native or technology enthusiast who finds himself in an organization that fails to realize it and deals with people that are comfortable in their shoes and not willing to modernize themselves, you have to consider if it’s worth sticking around or if your time, energy and experience is better used elsewhere.
