Digital Transformation: 5 Keys To Meeting This Challenge

The journey to digital transformation is far from easy. But the brakes are not only technical or financial. There is also resistance to change, starting with many business leaders. An overhaul of work methods is an essential preamble before deploying new digital tools.

A change in technology and culture can quickly become an obstacle course. At the end of this period of confinement, many companies are trying to recover after weeks in “degraded mode”. Various measures must be put in place to strengthen the resilience of its activity and improve its performance.

1) Be Open

The period of confinement has undermined certain achievements and in particular working methods. The growing integration of telework implies the implementation of new methods.

However, most organizations do not prioritize an “open” culture in the workplace and have some common traits:

• A mostly top-down chain of decisions that makes implementation processes cumbersome and partially opposes the desire to generalize participatory management.
• The heaviness of hierarchical strata, still too often favouring status over competence, which defeats many projects that require agility and fluidity.
• Operating in silos, which limits the efforts made to develop cross-functionality and cooperation.
• It seems increasingly important to solicit reactions from your team members, to show openness and a willingness to accept them. It is necessary to promote collaborative innovation and to connect skills for the benefit of a short-lived common goal.

This new attitude will be appreciated to initiate or accelerate its digital transformation.

2) Pay Attention

It’s important to constantly think about the goals you’re trying to achieve, assess your progress toward those results, and change course if necessary. Transparency in decisions also helps boost employee morale and communication throughout the organization.

This also encourages teams to give their opinion.

3) Be Inclusive

A diverse workforce is a more efficient workforce. According to a report from McKinsey, diversity improves financial performance. Diversity promotes inclusive thinking and ideas, which are essential today.

To attract and retain talent, it is important to encourage diversity and inclusive thinking by encouraging positive actions from employees and even suppliers. “The art of success consists in knowing how to surround yourself with the best”.

4) Accept Failure

Failure is still frowned upon in France. In other countries, like the United States, it is on the contrary a sign of progress. It shows that you have tried to improve, which leads to positive learning as an organization. “Success consists in going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”, insisted Winston Churchill!

Insisting that “failure is not an option” will only result in overspending on resources and missing deadlines, as your teams get bogged down in a cycle of high effort with little changes.

5) Celebrate Success

Employees who feel that their efforts and achievements are not recognized – or worse, that they are only recognized when something goes wrong – are more likely to underperform.

It is therefore important to celebrate the successes of employees at the individual, team, organizational and corporate level. This will help encourage everyone to improve.

These five points show that a transformation project should not rely solely on new tools. People remain the essential link in its success. Without support from the teams, no digital solution (even if it is considered effective) will improve its performance.

Managing a team in the digital age, and even more so with confinement, therefore no longer covers the same realities.

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