Blog 6-7: The Divide in the House

There have been many times over the past few years where I have been invited by customers to help them find an answer to a question posed by their CEO. Paraphrasing, but in general this question goes along the lines of “Tell me what we need to do to digitally transform our business?”

What a massive question that is! Unfortunately, one that can have a million different answers depending on who you ask. From a HR person stating they want to introduce a new Digital Recognition Platform, to a Quality person that would like to Digitise Laboratories, to Operations saying they want to introduce Digital SOPs, through Supply Chain stating they want to create Digital Passports for every product. For IT they want to give everyone a new VPN login. The list can go on and on.

I do recollect an amusing request that was made by a Senior Executive in a global manufacturer, “can’t we simply order a digital transformation in a box from you?” A serious request, and possibly a sign of just how confusing, complex and diverse the view is on Digital Transformation within an organisation.

In the previous blog I touched on the need for trust and collaboration with suppliers. In this blog, we will look inside the house, as the same need exists in nearly all organisations. This has nothing to do with technology, that is purely the enabler. Organisations must collaborate to ensure internal alignment that will enable a transformation to occur.

Let me provide an example based upon new product introduction. The process of a new product from a lab, through marketing, pilot production, scaling up, to commercialisation, is all underpinned by Consumer Intelligence, feedback and continuous improvement. This needs to involve every part of an organisation, and it normally does, but just how fluid is it? Is collaboration seamless? Does every collaborator benefit or does the levels of frustration simply amplify? Does the process fuel a blame culture when things don’t go to plan?

This is exactly where Digital Transformation should make a significant impact, digitising all interactions, all hand-offs, enabling quick learning, failing fast, recovering quicker. However, inside the house there are several dividing walls that have been put up that can hinder the process.

• Identifying the Priority Use Cases Human nature tends to dictate that “my problem is the biggest one”. Hence when looking across all the players in the above scenario, everyone has what they believe is "Priority ONE Use Case" that must be resolved. Sorting out the “wheat from the chaff” as they say is important. Which Use Cases can make the biggest and quickest impact with the least amount of effort? Which if done correctly can deliver ROI to fuel the investment for others? How do we ensure that even when staggering the implementation of the Use Cases, that they all align, they are complimentary, and progressively enhance their predecessors? How do we ensure people don’t feel like they have had “their nose put out of joint”? Tough task, but achievable by getting people to look beyond their own sandpit, and to understand the task in hand holistically.

• Sunk Cost Investments Years of investments, sometimes the wrong ones, or more often ones which don’t align with the future state vision, can raise their ugly head and prevent the RIGHT DECISIONS. It can be the “not invented here” syndrome, where a person refuses to let go of their legacy. Or a system or process that is deemed simply too difficult or costly to change. These may completely undermine the plan, or as a minimum, start to dilute the potential that could be attained by transforming the business. Objective analysis must be made for these situations, removing emotion, and focusing on the longer-term business benefit.

• Breaking Down Silos In my very first blog I spoke of the Eye Opener of seeing the Plant Manager up to his elbows in grease during TPM sessions. This drove teamwork, and broke down barriers. As businesses get larger and more complicated, roles get created for multitudes of different isolated tasks. Job Descriptions and Performance Objectives are based upon this blinkered view of the business. Hence collaboration goes out the window. Smaller organisations remain nimble with multi-tasking roles being the norm. So, the question is, how to turn what can be a hierarchical, bureaucratic organisational structure and culture, into one which is more focused on networking and collaboration, being nimble and athletic. There can be massive value in doing this, and it can allow you to simplify what has most likely become an overburdened complex organisational structure.

• Making Things Stick Change, if not managed correctly, can be like stretching out an elastic band. You take your hand off it for a split second, and it simply springs back to its original shape. If change management is not implemented correctly during the transformation of the business, it may become a very costly exercise. Investments will sit and gather dust as nobody is using them. Performance overall may degrade as the changes have not replaced the old, instead just added on top of them another layer of complexity. This is all about transfer of ownership, accountability and let’s not forget, pride.

• Strategy or Initiative? Digital Transformation must be treated as a Strategic Activity, a Business Transformation. This is because a Strategic Activity, driven from the very top of the company, then has more chance of becoming part of the companies DNA. If you allow Digital Transformation to be recognised only as an initiative, there is a high probability that it will be seen as being “optional”. How do you drive business transformation if 50% of the business decides to “opt-out”?

• Generational Divide I do not want this part to be interpreted as ageism, as it is not. The Baby Boomers and GenX’ers hold vast amounts of knowledge. However, as technology has advanced so quickly in their lifetime, there can also be a high resistance to change within this community. This is not about giving them all early retirement and sending them on their way. This is about using the time they have left in the company to CODIFY their knowledge, if you don’t, it may be lost forever! I had the pleasure of working with a retired Brewmaster from MillerCoors for many years. He was on a mission to educate his peer group about how technology is of great value for their role – not a threat. His peer group felt technology could eliminate their roles. To the contrary, he educated them on how technology would allow them to DO THEIR JOB. Brewmasters should not be constantly fighting fires, they should be spending their time on making the beer and the process better – and technology frees up their time to do this.

The companies that can figure out how to excite and energise their complete organisation about transforming digitally, will be the ones that move fastest and achieve the best results, and obtain significant, sustainable competitive advantage. Schneider Electric for me is a great example of this based upon what they are doing in their own factories, gaining WEF Lighthouse status for many of them. It should not be seen as being a threat, but an exciting opportunity. Building perpetual optimism within the culture of the company will create a force multiplier for the change that lies ahead.

To close this blog, one last comment. No mention of technology here at all. It is a SECONDARY or even TERTIARY topic. Technology is there to support the plan, NOT be the plan.

Blog 7-7: One last blog to come, The Light at the End of the Tunnel, released in one weeks time