Digital transformation is no longer an option, but a necessity. We all need to adopt new technologies that can improve collaboration, help us better anticipate the competition, inspire an agile culture and, ultimately, create lasting shareholder value. As we are experiencing, and which was strongly echoed in our recent interviews with C-level Scandinavian executives, to reap the incredible business advantages made possible by digital technologies, companies need a transformational mindset to successfully undergo a digital transformation.
“CEOs expect their digital revenue to increase by more than 80 percent by 2020, and the percentage of enterprises creating advanced digital transformation initiatives is predicted to more than double by 2020, from today’s 22 percent to almost 50 percent.”
– Forbes, 6 Predictions About the Future of Digital Transformation
It is increasingly clear that digital technologies are only part of the puzzle. While management understands their potential, getting employees to embrace them can be challenging. A combination of lack of time, discomfort with new working processes and concern about implications on personal performance and opportunity are some of the barriers to digital transformation.
Because digital business transformation demands change at the same time it provides new tools to achieve it, we wondered if leading companies had identified new and interesting ways of thinking about transformation. To learn more, we conducted a number of interviews with C-level executives at top Scandinavian companies.
“The future will bring more transparency and alignment of data, which will present new opportunities for innovation and investment. We see digitisation as a way to expand and market the brand.”
– MBLM, The Transformational Mindset
“The digital world is less managed and changes the way we interact, engage and collaborate going forward. The way we connect with other players in the value chain will change, as will how we collaborate across the company and with the different players in the market. It is important to drive this transformation.”
– MBLM, The Transformational Mindset
By combining their insights with learnings from our own experiences working with transformation, we created the Transformation Triad, a new framework for addressing digital business transformation, and identified 10 critical principles that reflect the best practices from our research and offer insights into how companies can put the framework into action.
The Transformation Triad
Radiating around a transformational mindset, the framework is built on the insight that a triad of Strategic Pillars, Capability Enablers and Motivational Measures are essential, interlinked components of digital transformation.
As one of our respondents put it, “Whoever thought that Google would produce self-driving cars? But they are already doing it. Tomorrow they might be building 3-D houses. You never know where the competition will come from and looking at your own industry might not be the most helpful.”
That’s why we created this framework and its accompanying principles—to help our clients envision, build and sustain digitally competent, agile organisations that are ready to take advantage of the profound changes and opportunities that digital technologies present.