In recent times, top executives have talked about the need for a digital transformation in their organisations and often sought to fix this by contracting a digital transformation executive to deliver the digital objectives.
These digital executives are often given a 1-or 2-year contract to come up with the digital transformation initiatives to implement the digital changes. What often happens is that these digital transformation executives tinker with the processes, come with big transformational documents complete with 3-to-5-year roadmaps and often find it hard to institutionalise the cultural change relevant for the sustenance of the new digital regime.
What inevitably happens is the collapse of the digital initiatives and the complaints that top management has wasted money and these digital transformation executives didn’t really do the work
The celebrated Austrian-American management consultant, Peter Drucker, once said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This is especially true when it comes to neglecting an organisational culture while considering digital transformation strategies.
Edgar Henry Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan school of Management and a leading researcher in the field of Organisational Culture, defined “organizational culture” as comprising a number of features, including a shared “pattern of basic assumptions” which group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems.
If the staff of an organisation lack the behaviours and attitudes required to change what they do and how they do it, the transformation will not succeed.
An organization’s culture invariably affects the decisions and actions taken by its employees (at any and every level). This means that culture will either be an important enabler or a blocker for any digital transformation project.
Interestingly I have realised is that it is often harder to change the culture towards digital technology when top management realises that the new digital environment lends itself to reduced control of top management, employee empowerment and the fact that the processes can easily be manipulated.
How would you explain a top executive that pushes for digital transformation but is not comfortable with approving a transaction online but would rather sign a cheque for that same transaction?
What about a top executive that has about ten documents to approve online and when told, he says it is the functional manager’s duty to remind him because he is very busy.
This same top executive expects that by putting up digital transformational quotes on the wall, setting Key Performance Indicators for transaction completion for lower-level staff, these would surely lead to a digital way of doing things and ultimately lead to better customer service.
Digital transformation is total and is continuous. It must be embraced by all staff – from top to bottom else it is money down the drain. Each digital transformation requires a plan to change the culture that is required for the transformation initiatives to work.
The future of any organisation is dependent on how employees embrace the cultural change that comes with digital transformation.
