I know the topic of Digital Transformation (DT) seems to be outdated, but it is not.

Actually, I consider it to be as relevant now as back when everybody was talking about it as “the latest trend” and figuring out where to start their own DT journeys as soon as yesterday.

Here is why: DT became a trend before the COVID-19 pandemic, and like most tech trends, it was slowly gaining momentum. But unlike anything else, it skyrocketed once most organizations were forced to send people back to the safety of their homes. They were expected to work remotely and remain just as productive, if not more so, than before.

At that point, we knew that DT was mandatory.

It was a matter of survival for many companies, and we saw a huge number of outstanding innovations in every industry. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately?) we don’t live in a perfect world, and many DT journeys were temporary measures, and many more were improvised due to the haste with which they were planned.

So many DT processes failed, and many more keep failing, and many were abandoned.

So, what happened?

For me, there’s a simple explanation: DT strategies are not being initiated where they should.

Let’s be realistic, a building cannot be built starting from the first floor.

You need to dig a big hole in the ground and build the right foundations for the size and purpose of the building.

Translating that into the digital world means doing the same within an organization’s culture: digging deep, reshaping mindsets, and laying the groundwork for a culture that will not only adapt to the new, improved, digitalized, future-intended way of doing things, but it will lead to it once it is ready.

The first thing that needs to be transformed is the people, the way they see themselves as part of the organization, and the way they believe they can make an impact.

Of course, this seems to be a huge challenge, and it is.

But those of us who are not digital natives have already gone through a personal digital transformation journey, don’t you think?

Our Personal Digital Transformation Journeys

We learned how to use digital calendars instead of paper ones, and now we have our contacts in a cloud-based service instead of having a paper phonebook. (and if it was part of our annual calendar back then, we needed to copy all of them, yes, by hand, from the 1994 to the 1995 book we got as a Christmas present in the office).

We learned how to access the news we are interested in on websites, social media, apps, or we configured notifications for them instead of getting the newspaper delivered every morning to our doors.

And, when was the last time we stood in line at a bank to transfer money or pay our credit cards?

This is hard evidence that we know what a digital transformation process is, and we lived through it, and maybe we complained about it, but here we are with a smartphone in our hand living a modern life.

So, digital natives should have the right mindset to go all digital at work, and digital immigrants have already been there and done that; we just need to make them aware of it. That is a great starting point for the state of mind pivot we must enable before (or during, if you are half the way there) any Digital Transformation project.

“A building cannot be built starting from the first floor.”

The Wrap

My point here is, instead of calling it Digital Transformation, maybe we should have called it Mental Transformation, or Cultural Transformation, or Mindset Transformation, or simply evolution.

But of course, none of those would’ve stuck.

So, let’s leave the name alone and instead focus our initial (or corrective) efforts on creating the right environment to support meaningful change in how organizations adapt to the current and future needs of users and consumers.

And let’s finish those digital transformation journeys, course-correct the ones that veered off track, and take the next steps toward a more digitalized, inclusive, and user-friendly way of delivering our products and services.