For many companies, the events of the last few months have highlighted the urgent need for digital transformation. Plans that were originally scheduled for the next 10 years have been dramatically accelerated. Successful Digital Transformation involves People, Process and Technology, but the first of these is too often treated as an after-thought.
The BTN partnered with Elements Talent Consultancy, an organisation with an impressive track record of partnering with rapidly scaling organisations and major corporations going through digital transformation to help them solve their toughest hiring challenges, for an invite-only roundtable discussion with senior leaders in the Transformation space.
The conversation was led by Daniel Goldstein, CEO & Founder at Elements Talent Consultancy, and he posed the question to the table around to what extent does your organisation deem the People function a key enabler of successful Digital Transformation? There deemed to be a big variance between companies on this with regards to where the People function was very much leading in this and part of a core team designing the operating model for the company going forward in digital transformation and in companies where they did not play a role at all other than an executional role.
The discussion followed by looking at some of the technology implementations that organisations that gone through previously where the failure of the transformation has come as people aren’t ready to use the technology. Employee readiness was then broken down into 4 themes around:
- Hard Skills – The actually skills that someone needs to use a technology
- Process Change – The way people work methodologically
- Organisational Structure – Are the right people built around the right teams?
- Culture – How people feel about it
If you get the 4 themes right then your transformation obviously has a much higher success rate of being embedded. Everybody always thinks about the technology when it comes to an implementation piece but the cultural aspect is ultimately what makes or breaks it. We (as an organisation and as an individual) need to understand what the purpose of the transformation is and engage our people first with the true end goal. Can we truly explain why we are doing this at this stage in time?
One view around the table was around finding out what it would take for people to be technologically resilient. If we can explain what our future organisation looks like in 5 years or 10 years time to our people, then our employees will be able to see and understand where they need to be in terms of their skillsets. The role of communications within this could not be more important and especially in ensuring that the message that comes from the top is kept consistent throughout the organisation.
The conversation moved on to the role of digital transformation within organisations. How can we equip our business to build through these times? It was agreed that if your company is not digitising now, then when is the right time? Normally, there is an internal push or an external push for a transformation to be initiated and COVID is being deemed as the external push in a variety of circumstances. Many organisations have had to rapidly pivot to the external factors being faced and pushed through digital transformation processes that would normally take months or years to build, sign off and role out. These transformations have now been navigated in a matter of weeks but what impact will this bring going forward and how long with business execs believe that transformation will take to adjust in the future?
When looking at any transformation, the group started to look at what the key goal of a transformation is. We should always be asking the question, ‘is this what our customers want?’ and ‘will our customer be happy to engage with this as part of exchange for money?’ This conversation naturally moved onto the role of business agility and whether business transformation was essentially just building agility. The group agreed in whole what you should never look at agile as an end goal but as a means to an end.
The discussion shifting into how the role of agile fits within an organisations’ processes that typically relies on hierarchy. One of the guests gave an example of where squads/tribes work within their organisation and how it is fit for purpose but agreed that sometimes leaders want ‘agile’ but also their current processes are the things that provide them with comfort. The question was posed around have the leaders in our organisation bought into agile because they truly understand the consequences and implications of it and what needs to change or have they bought into agile because someone gave them a really good pitch about agile? What does agile mean to everyone?
This understanding of the role of agile also rolled hand in hand with the role of trust within your transformation. Kicking off your transformation with trust is vital to its success and the clarity about what “I need this from you but what do you need from me to let this happen” is of huge importance. Often leaders are so keen to get started that things are forgotten when it comes to clear scope and trust, we must let go as leaders and provide freedom within a framework, whether than framework is agile or not.
As the session drew to a close, the group briefly looked at the role of the digital communications landscape and how it has changed. Communications should always be 2 way, especially within transformation and agility. Channels need to be open and listening should always be taken on board. One example from an attendee spoke about how their CEO described their role as 30% of it being around listening and engagement, which highlighted how important the role of communications sits within the firm from top-down.
The role of communications has obviously been challenged during the pandemic and there was a point raised about how communication with teams and managers had been great when using virtual solutions but when it comes to communications across teams and also with the customer, this is where there had potentially been negative impacts. People that were working remotely prior to the entire workforce being told to work remotely ultimately felt like they were more part of a team than before due to the rise in online communications platforms. However, so how do we really define what the role of culture is within a remote environment?
The conversation, unfortunately, had to come to an end as the hybrid way of work started to be discussed. The role of transformation will always be there, the need for transformation will always be prevalent but is digital transformation just business transformation in a digital world?
About Elements Talent Consultancy
Elements Talent Consultancy are a business with an impressive track record of partnering with rapidly-scaling organisations and major corporations going through digital transformation to help them solve their toughest hiring challenges. Since 2015, they have embedded teams of consultants within some of the world’s best-known organisations, including Spotify, Booking.com, TikTok, Just Eat, iZettle, King.com, H&M and IKEA.
