News in Digital from The Digital Transformation People #29

STRATEGY & INNOVATION

12 Strategies For Innovating Through A Downturn
By Katrina Teague
In good times – and especially in bad – innovation remains a critical lever for organizations to achieve their long-term strategic objectives. Organizations that prioritize innovating in a downturn will find that a constrained environment can actually foster creativity that leads to powerful waves of long-term growth. To ensure that the next economic downturn coincides with an innovation upturn for your business, consider these 12 action steps: Thanks to Jaco Minnaar for this one.

How the Tech Giants Make Their Billions
By Jeff Desjardins
Collectively the Big 5 tech companies generate $800bn in revenue a year. So how do they make their money?

Ideas are Denied by the Dozen: Why We Need to Celebrate Ideas, Ideation and Innovation to Succeed
By Brian Solis
“If innovation is the key to future-proofing and more effectively competing for the future, why is it that many organizations get caught up in a pattern of incrementalism?”

The Most Innovative Companies 2019
BCG
BCG’s latest innovation survey surfaces some big trends. Strong innovators are extending their edge over weaker rivals by embracing AI, platforms and ecosystems. BCG’s latest innovation survey shows there have been some interesting shifts in this year’s roster of the 50 most innovative companies. Plus a great interactive tool as well to look at the data.

SPEED & AGILITY

Agility: The New Response to Dynamic Change
By Dave Ulrich
“When HR both advocates for and models agility, they ensure that strategies, organizations, and individuals anticipate and adapt to dynamic change as fast as the change occurs.”

Organisational agility and agile teams in modern management
By Michael Crowe
“An agile culture is increasingly recognised as a critical component for the survival and growth of a business. In a fast-paced environment where changing trends and consumer sentiment are the norm, significant disruption is not only to be expected but embraced.” ~ Peter Abraham

We Need To Stop Glorifying Failure. Here’s What To Do Instead
By Greg Satell
As Greg Satell explains in his new book Cascades, “great transformations are achieved not by glorifying failure, but when we learn from mistakes and begin to do things differently.” Here he shows you how.

PEOPLE & CHANGE

Why Structure Eats Culture for Lunch
Safi Bahcall
Just when you thought you’d got the importance of culture! This piece from Safi Bahcall outlines his thinking in his book Loonshots which introduces a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

You Must Understand Culture Before You Can Change
By Siobhan McHale
“Many bosses (at all levels) do not understand the BASICS when it comes to company culture, in my experience. How can you hope to change the culture without an understanding of its core elements?” In this video, Siobhan McHale, Head of HR at Dulux Group shares her definition of workplace culture and its 4 essential components.

Give Your Employees Specific Goals and the Freedom to Figure Out How to Reach Them
By John Hagel III and Cathy Engelbert
The military idea of Commander’s Intent—a mechanism used to empower subordinates to initiate creative solutions—is known to foster adaptability and real-time problem-solving. Many executive can see the advantages but with fundamental changes in mindset and management practices required to achieve it in business where do you start?
 

Don’t hire the most qualified, hire the craziest.
By Rémon van Riemsdijk
“Don’t hire the most qualified hire the craziest” Jack Ma.
If it’s right for Jack Ma and famously for Steve Jobs then there must be something in it. CTO at Advidi, Rémon van Riemsdijk explains why.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

The Game-Changing Role Of Customer Intent In The Modern Marketing Funnel
By Brian Solis
“According to a recent article by Allan Thygesen, President of the Americas at Google, “no two journeys are exactly alike, and in fact, most journeys don’t resemble a funnel at all.” Now, journeys are incredibly fragmented, real-time, mobile-first and resemble pyramids, diamonds, hourglasses and more. Understanding, anticipating and delivering against evolving customer behaviors and needs is key to driving business growth.”

17 Charts That Show Where Social Media is Heading
By Neil Patel
“You already know it’s harder to get traffic from LinkedIn unless you spend money ads. But the reality is you can’t ignore platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or any other new contender that comes out and gains traction. The trick is to learn how to adapt and get the most out of each platform. Here are 17 charts that will show you how to maximize your LinkedIn traffic”

Distinctiveness doesn’t need to come at the cost of differentiation
By Mark Ritson
“The story of differentiation and its more superficial, extrovert cousin called distinctiveness is one of the most interesting and important in branding right now.” Mark Ritson Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School explains why.

How to extract maximum value from a zero-based design approach to customer journeys
By JP Higgins, Elixabete Larrea, Swapnil Prabha, Alex Singla, and Rohit Soo
Companies finding success in transforming their customer journeys are discovering that four practices are critical.

TECHNOLOGY

A glimpse of the future of public transport from China. 
Shenzhen – the first major city in the world with an all-electric fleet of public transport vehicles.

Box stacking robots 
More from Boston Dynamics – these box stacking robots “are half awesome, half terrifying.” Thanks to Anthony J James for this one.

Automated dustbin lorries
Bin collectors won’t be quaking in their boots just yet!
Thanks Greg Sales for sharing this.

TALENT

How AI-based strategic workforce planning can enable the “skill shift” in digital transformation
By Dr. Joël Krapf
How to use AI-based competency clustering to increase transparency for employees to increase their engagement and participation in self-development and upskilling for the future.

New DevOps Institute report identifies the critical skills enterprises say they need
By George V. Hulme
According to a new survey of more than 1,600 technology and business leaders, the highest demand candidates are the ones who can bring technical skills to the table that can facilitate automation but at the same time balance them out with soft skills like collaboration and cooperation, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills.

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LEADERSHIP & ORGANISATION

Digital Transformation
By Geoffrey Moore
“Companies finding success in transforming their customer journeys are discovering that four practices are critical.” Geoffrey Moore

Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology
By Behnam Tabrizi, Ed Lam, Kirk Girard, Vernon Irvin
With 70% of all DT initiatives do not reach their goals and an estimated $900 of the $1.3 trillion spent on DT last year going to waste companies will be forgiven for their concerns about ROI on their digital transformation initiative. Here are five key lessons from learned digital transformations that have succeeded.

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“Those people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do”
~ Steve Jobs

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Digital Transformation by Lindsay Herbert: An Executive Summary
Read this Executive Summary by Neil Rainey and learn from Lindsay’s BUILD model how to deliver digital transformation success in five stages. This is a great “how to” guide for making driving Digital Transformation in organisations. Lindsay Herbert has based this guide on many interviews with “C” suite executives at a wide range of organisations (for profit, not for profit, academic institutions) and on her years of experience with the subject matter.