How to Equate Your Digital Transformation Journey to Sustainable Success

Have the following questions ever crossed your mind? 

• What is the pace of digital transformation in my organization?  
• Do recent digital initiatives align with the company’s overall business strategy? 
• How far ahead are my competitors? 
• What do I need to do to remain ahead of the game?

Matthew Bertram, a Future Point of View (FPOV) senior consultant, has answers to those questions. We were happy to host Bertram’s insightful presentation on digital transformation in a recent installment of 90Minutes CxO Insights — Fast & Furious Digital Transformation: Charting the Course for Sustainable Success vs. A Temporary Fix. Here are the highlights of his presentation. 

 

Digital Transformation: 50 Years of Digital Assimilation 

According to Bertram, the birth of digital transformation can be traced back to 2000. Although we are halfway through the age of machine intelligence, we have only just begun to scratch the surface. “We have AI and ML beginning to truly integrate with our society and our daily lives.” Bertram predicts that by 2050, society will be truly connected through the concept of transhumanism, “where you have computers and machines that are fully assimilated.”  

“One of the challenges that we have with digital transformation is risk.” Bertram explains the biggest risk in the digital business world is data extortion and AI attacks. “What you’re going to see is more of machine intelligence, extortion, and machine learning that targets AI. Whereas right now, attackers are targeting the data.” 

In addition, Bertram highlights that the rate of change in technology is not in tandem with the rate of change in people and organizations. Technology grows exponentially, while organizations grow logarithmically. He calls this the transformation dilemma.  

“What does that do as a leader? That creates a risk, it creates a gap between what’s possible, where we are, and where our organization is.” Bertram names this gap the Leadership Danger Zone. “This is the zone where we as leaders have to bring our organization up, we have to get them from where we are now, see what the capabilities are, and what it is in the future that we can move our organization to.” 

 

The Power of Pre-Emptive Vision

“Think about the technology that we’re talking about over the next five years or 20 years. You can break that technology down into five different categories.” The categories are conceptual technology, leading-edge technology, early technology, established technology, and mature technology. 

With each technology, there is timing, advantages and disadvantages, market reward, and market cost. When should leaders implement a new technology, taking these factors into account?  

“The longer you wait to implement a technology, the less risk there is in implementing. However, the reward from the market from being able to implement that technology goes down first, there’s a first-mover advantage. The goal is to be able to take advantage of new technology without having to be leading edge without being bleeding edge.” 

Bertram says leaders should have a good idea of conceptual technology five to seven years out, and leading-edge technology like blockchain, two to three years out. There are a lot of doubts about the metaverse, augmented reality, and specific types of AI. How do leaders know whether these technologies fit within their organization?  

Awareness, exploration, and adoption of new technologies

Firstly, leaders have to be aware of available technology, explore ways to bring that technology into their organization, and finally, make a bet to adopt the technology through investment. However, Bertram says that most organizations’ field of vision of the future is limited. They start exploring technology only to find out that they are already too late. “For example, Meta virtual reality. There are companies right now that are just now starting to talk about Meta, that are just now starting to wonder about this VR.” 

To avoid lagging behind the latest technology, Bertram calls for leaders to extend their vision as it is a critical skill set. “The way you do that is something that we call rivers of information®, which is simply a systematic way of learning.” 

“Winning organizations don’t look at what’s right in front of them today. They look at what’s coming out several years down the road and begin to explore. So right about the time it becomes leading-edge technology, they are prepared and ready to adopt.”  

According to Bertram, a combination of the rivers of information® and the high beam process has the potential to give leaders a two-year lead over their competitors.  

 

High Beam Strategy Process

Shared future vision 

“It’s important to be able to come to this shared understanding.” Leaders and employees should have a common picture of what the future holds for them and what it means for their organization. 

Trend identification and extrapolation 

Bertram says there are three types of trends to look at — macro trends, global trends, and industry trends. The goal is to identify the top three trends that are going to affect your organization. Once the trends have been identified, the next thing to do is to figure out whether these trends are hurting (anchor) or helping (sail) your organization.  

Develop a portfolio

This portfolio should include three types of investments — “Investments in people, investments in process, and investments in specific tools. Once you have this portfolio, once you have these investments, then you’ve got a way to be able to communicate this out.”  

Bertram stresses that this process should be repeated every year to assess the progress and development of technology investments and make any changes if needed. When executing a strategy or process, Bertram asks leaders to consider eight environmental factors which are culture, motivation, skill and will, key opinion leaders, personality styles, automation acceptance, tolerance for change, and market trends. 

 

Three Capabilities to Help Your Organization in a VUCA World  

The world is getting more unstable from a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) perspective. “We’ve seen in the last few years what happens when you have a black swan event that totally changes all your assumptions that you did not see coming. How do you deal with a major global event that surprises you?” 

Bertram names three capabilities that are integral in helping an organization navigate a VUCA world. “No matter where you are in your transformation journey, these are capabilities that you need for your organization.” 

Citizen data scientist skill set

According to Bertram, citizen data scientists have a specific skill set to “fill in the white space that a data science team would not be able to catch.” 

The skill set of a citizen data scientist:  

• Understand the purpose of data activation and the framework for excellence 
• Thoroughly know your company’s data environment 
• Understand analytics and how to enrich data insights 
• How to use visualization, storytelling, and mashups to communicate with impact 
• Using rules, triggers, and actions to automate insight 

From Bertram’s personal experience, organizations that are made up of 10% to 15% of data scientists have an enormous advantage over their competitors.  

Citizen application specialist 

The next capability is a citizen application specialist who has the following skill set: 

• Understand concepts of process automation and the future of work 
• Thoroughly know your company’s automation environment and tools 
• Systems thinking, data and automation basics 
• Sustaining automation over time 
• Proactively solving common challenges of automation  

“An essential part of being a citizen application specialist is understanding how to proactively solve the challenge of displacement and what to do with reskilling and retasking humans.” 

Rivers of information®

The third and final capability is rivers of information® which aims to foster a culture of learning that is intentional and continuous. This is an initiative that needs to be constantly maintained and reviewed. Bertram says it is a big part of an organization’s upskilling program.  

“With rivers of information, it’s not just you as the leader. It’s not just your executive team. It’s not just your board. It’s the entire organization. This is typically driven by HR, sometimes by Learning & Development. As you implement rivers of information®, each department would have their own sources, reviews, and the ability to make this part of job descriptions.” 

 

The Next Steps

Bertram recommends that leaders start working on the following: 

• Use high beam planning to get a clear vision of the next 3 to 5 years 
• Identify investments in people, processes, and products 
• Integrate citizen data science, citizen automation specialist, and rivers of information training into your organization  

“Building centaur capabilities into your organization is a huge advantage that augments any digital transformation. A centaur is a highly advanced human. Someone who has good EQ and good learning habits.”  

A digital centaur is an individual who has the skills of a citizen data scientist, citizen application specialist, and rivers of information® expert. When you pair a digital centaur with advanced technology, they know how to activate data, automate system processes, and continually learn to keep up with the latest developments in technology.