In our first blog post, Exploring the Technology Landscape and Digital Transformation, we jumped into digital transformation and shared that digital transformation isn’t that successful. To be data driven means that data is being utilised to make decisions and help run a business. How successful do you think that is? One may then ask: what is to be done? Digital transformation isn’t as simple as buying software and then saying: GO! It requires work, especially on the human side of things and dealing with the culture of an organisation.
To be truly data driven and have success with digital transformation, organisations must embrace a combination of both the human element and the data/technology element. I mean, changing organisational culture is easy, right? WRONG! It isn’t. I don’t like the word “change”. What we want to do is “evolve” a culture to utilise data and digital transformation tools and products effectively. No easy task, especially given in the first blog we saw these are only 30% successful.
The nice thing is we can change that. Understanding that success is contingent on the human, plus the data/technology can help us drive it. Culture is a big piece of this. Think of culture as 4 legs of a stool:
- Organisational habits
- Organisational beliefs and traditions
- Organisational work
- Organisational policies and procedures
What happens if one of the legs of a stool is broken? The stool may survive for a time, but could be on shaky ground. We need to repair broken stool legs to ensure the integrity of the stool. And the same can be said of culture.
Within a strategy to drive data and digital transformation, we need to ensure an investment in the human element is a part of it. For example, within a data strategy, data literacy should be a part of the strategy to empower the end-user with the right skills to utilise data and analytics effectively. Data literacy isn’t the only piece, of course, but it is a part of it.
The same is true with a strategy around digital transformation: how are you addressing the human element? What communication and messaging do you have? What strategy to roll out the program effectively with training do you have? If it isn’t there, you may not find the success you want. But, what if we had an early warning system or a tool to help us understand our people and we will speak to Organisational Sensemaking™ that comes from Tensense. Tensense taps into the emotional heartbeat of your company. We have developed a software solution that acts as an early warning system. It helps you make smarter, more informed decisions, more quickly.