When I explain what I do for a living – as a consultant – I can check all boxes on a bullshit bingo card. One big fascination of mine: the digital transformation.
Everybody does it
Few organizations to be found who say they’re not in a digital transformation. Beside agile in the past ten years, it’s the next big thing. What organizations actually do when they’re in a digital transformation massively depends.
In practice I saw the following things happen in a digital transformation. The implementation of agile values and principles. The set up of scrum teams. Removal of technical debt or even a reshape of the entire IT-landscape. All kinds of valuable improvements, but I wondered: is this a real digital transformation?
Transformation, optimization or restoration?
Menno Lanting exquisitely explains it in his book ‘Het transformatiemoeras’ (in Dutch). Most of the time, digital transformation isn’t the right way to put it. Oftentimes it’s a digital optimization. Or even a digital restoration. The restoration is a necessary catch up because the organization anticipated way too late to the transition from the analog to the digital era.
Zoom out for the best result
I don’t intend to (re)define the concept of a digital transformation. I’d rather focus on adding value to achieving the goals from our customers in my assignments. To know, as an organization, what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it, is most important of all. Knowing the why can help to make the most overwhelming or abstract things controllable and pragmatic again.
That doesn’t mean digitization isn’t complex. Lanting states: zoom out first to be able to focus again. Taking a distance makes sure you’re able to see the details in the right context. That rationale is appealing to me. When you repeatedly zoom out and focus again, you can clarify the transformation roadmap. Bit by bit, without checking the boxes on the bullshit bingo card. That’s why I prefer to call it: a crystal-clear transformation.
Essence of Change 