The world as we know is going through major transformation. Innovation is relentless, disruption is accelerating, expectations are high and social tensions are rising.

The emerging world is highly volatile and dynamic requiring constant development of new skills and the refinement of existing ones.

The fourth industrial revolution has transformed business models and produced new ones.

This has led to greater transparency, changing consumer behaviour, increased consumer and employee engagement.

Accelerating an inevitable transformation

Technology has changed the way businesses engage and serve current and emerging needs of its stakeholders.

COVID19 has also accelerated the delivery of digital solutions and transformation which fuses demand and supply to deliver new ways of consuming goods and services.

These changes have resulted in new ways of engagement with customers and new ways of working for employees. Trading places and the notion of office or workplace have changed and people can work and trade from anywhere.

The COVID 19 pandemic has added to this rate of change and forced businesses to adapt or face closure.

Adapting in adopting transformation

In adapting to these forces of change, businesses have to be flexible and acknowledge the magnitude of the change.

The adoption of the new order should start with transforming the leadership DNA. Traditional leadership traits will not deliver desired outcomes and will require focused attention in order to survive.

Organisations should devise frameworks for measuring and defining internal organisational capabilities.

This will ensure that they are better prepared to evaluate and adopt emerging capabilities.

The impact on customers and employees is very important and should be taken seriously  in defining the transformation journey.

Customers and employees are becoming tech-savvy and their demand for more personalised engagement is going to increase. Therefore, the customer experience and employee engagement journey should be defined as part of the transformation journey for organisations in order to meet the need of these important stakeholders.

What makes a successful digital transformation

For the digital transformation journey to be effective it needs to cover 6 critical factors:

1. Business model evolution: Continuous critical evaluation of current business models and how they will survive new models emerging from technology advancements. Data is very critical and organisations using data driven models will achieve greater returns. Furthermore, the transformation is impacting all facets of business and will require all functions to understand the impact and have plans to respond.

1. Trimodal Operating Models: Adopting operating models for managing legacy, current and future capabilities. Business should recognise that the three modes will be managed concurrently and the share of their focus will require a delicate balance and associated skills and experience
2. Leadership infinity: Managing in the digital world will require leadership that is agile, resilient and vulnerable.
3. Clearly Defined roadmaps: Defining the transformation vision and required actions to realise the vision is very critical. This should be communicated to all stakeholders in order to ensure alignment and engagement.
4. Change Management: Taking all stakeholders on the journey of transformation is very critical. The changes should be clearly communicated, the impact understood and a continuous engagement plan in place.
5. Skill Transition and development: The transformation is likely to impact current workforce and will require a workforce transformation plan. The transformation plan should include skills change in policies (Bring your own device (BYOD), Build your own system (BYOS), Work from home (WFH)), learning and development, employee engagement and how to manage performance.

The rate of change is impacting all of us in different ways and we need to find the most optimal framework for dealing with the changes.

We have shared our ‘The Unplugg Group and Future Ingenium‘ approach and hope it will add value to your own situation.