Are we still talking about digital transformation?

Gavin Beckett – Perform Green

Apparently we still are. Whether we should be is another matter. There is certainly a strong case against ‘digital’, my version of which was made in a blog post a couple of years ago, which stated firmly

Digital transformation is important. But it’s important because digital is a means of doing transformation, not because transformation enables digital.

That leaves us with ‘transformation’. Is that a word with enough problems of its own that we should avoid it as well? The case against is clear, and is well articulated in this post: transformation carries implications of one massive co-ordinated effort, of starting with stability, applying the intended change, and then returning to a new and better stability – and none of that happens in the real world. Instead, it’s better to see change from a more agile perspective, neatly summarised in a line quoted in the post

Approaching change in a more evolutionary way may be the best way of making effective progress.  Small steps towards a bigger picture, with wiggle room to alter the path.

Sometimes, though, that bigger picture is big enough to deserve being called transformational. Sometimes the first step is possible only when there is some sense of direction and of scale of ambition. Sometimes radical change is what’s needed – it’s not hard to look around and see systems and organisations crying our for transformation. We should be cautious about discarding the ambition just because, too often, the means deployed to achieve it have fallen short.

Indeed, perhaps the real problem with ‘transformation’ as word is that it has been applied to far too casually to things which haven’t been nearly transformational enough in their ambition. If digital transformation is to mean anything, it has to be more than technology supported process improvement.

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