News In Digital from The Digital Transformation People #43

June 9, 2020

Welcome to the latest edition of News In Digital. As the COVID-19 crisis begins to ease, here you’ll find insights on where to focus your efforts to survive and thrive in the new normal. From scaling innovation whilst optimising the core business, harnessing the power of platform business models to leading and leveraging new ways of working effectively with an increasingly dispersed workforce.

In the current situation, many corporate innovators face a dilemma; in most companies they are asked to refocus activities to support the core business while at the same time they hear that they should prepare for post-crisis growth. So how could you and your peer corporate innovators solve this dilemma?

Four things Corporate Innovators need to do now … and how to proceed
By Frank Mattes Co-Autho of Scaling Up

How are we doing with COVID-19? The answer seems to be pretty well. “You may have received the meme about digital transformation and COVID-19. It goes like this… There is a question with three possible answers. The question is, ‘Who led the digital transformation of your company?’, and the answers are ‘the CEO, ‘the CTO’ and ‘COVID-19’. COVID-19 is circled. The implication of this meme is clear – the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation.” But let’s not kid ourselves says Michael Wade as he explains:

Why the success of WFH could be dangerous for digital transformation
By Michael Wade

“From the archives”: ’19 Bulletproof Strategies If You Want Your Corporation to Look (vs. in Fact Be) Innovative’ – worth revisiting for a grin and rethinking corporate innovation in times of crisis. Examples: – Launch an accelerator – Have multiple groups with similar but different enough mandates – Hire a huge management consulting firm – Thank you Dr Ralph Christian-Ohr co-Author of Scaling Up for sharing this one:

A Guide To Corporate Innovation
By CBInsights

In fact, though most organisations now understand that the complexity of digital transformation makes it hard to achieve as you’ll see with this chart from Deloitte’s 2020 Chief Strategy Officer Survey: Importance of strategic priority area vs. Ability to execute.

So how should organisations approach digital transformation and who should lead it? Dion Hinchcliffe argues if we are to rebuild and recover from COVID-19 then The CIO Must Lead Business Strategy Now
By Dion Hinchcliffe

BCG Henderson proposes a Fractual Strategy approach where the response to COVID-19 is effectively on multiple timescales.

More than anything else though, digital transformation requires talent. Indeed, assembling the right team of technology, data, and process people who can work together — with a strong leader who can bring about change — maybe the single most important step that a company contemplating digital transformation can take. Of course, even the best talent does not guarantee success. But a lack of it almost guarantees failure. According to this article from HBR

Digital Transformation Comes Down to Talent in 4 Key Areas
From HBR

And the good news, if your talent is working from home, is that you’ll barely see a drop in productivity. According to research firm Valoir, the abrupt move to working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has had only had a 1 per cent reduction on work productivity. And more than 40 per cent of workers would prefer to work remotely full time in the future.

What’s the impact of Covid19 Home Working on Productivity ?
From ZDNet

Working from home or not here’s a great piece from HBR on the importance of diversity. As Ed Morrison who posted it says “Increasingly, our organizations are facing adaptive challenges. These are complex problems with no clear solution. Digital transformation presents complex, adaptive challenges. To address these challenges you need a cognitively diverse team, A team of individuals who are capable of both divergent and convergent thinking.“

Teams Solve Problems When They Are More Cognitively Diverse
From HBR

And what of new ways of working? This is a good article on What’s Next In DevOps? By Andrew Davies

As DevOps movement continues to grow in terms of its impact and influence in the IT ecosystem there’s no question that the DevOps movement is maturing to the point that it has a power and a voice comparable to that of other movements such as cloud and agile.

The shift from project to product continues, with a focus on

small, semi-autonomous teams. Data science and analytics continues, to grow in importance as does the demand for platforms that integrate and aggregate information from disparate tools. Concepts such as Value Stream Mapping that look at the entire Dev lifecycle become increasingly important, and pre-built tools to support this become more common.

For some tips on how you can make the move from project to product here’s a good article from CIO Crossing the project-to-product chasm By Michael Bertha

To help you with value mapping you may find this will be useful.

What is value stream mapping? A lean technique for improving business processes.
By Sarah K White

Speaking of value don’t forget your people. Here’s a piece from the prolific Dave Green of Insight 222 as he speaks with Manish Goel. As Dave says:

“The current Covid-19 crisis has spiked further interest in ONA as companies seek to understand the ramifications of the biggest remote working experiment in history.

ONA can be used to help answer questions such as:

– Are our newly remote teams collaborating enough (or too much)?

– What is the level of connectedness within and between teams?

– Who could be at risk from burnout?”

The Role of Network Analytics (ONA) in Ensuring Team Collaboration and Well Being
By Dave Green

And finally, remembering that successful digital transformation is ultimately about creating new value through business model innovation let’s hear from two experts on platform business models. Firstly, an excellent case study from Simon Torrance which will give you some insight into how Amazon are seeing their sales surge 26% in the face of COVID-19 and why traditional business needs to learn to fight back fast.

Platform Business Model: Amazon Case Study
By Simon Torrance

Simons new book called ‘FightBack – How to win in the digital economy with platforms, ventures and entrepreneurs’. Co-Authored with Felix Staeritz is available on Amazon or you can contact Simon to access the 20% publisher’s discount.

The second piece, a classic by John Hagel, Co-Chair of the Deloitte Centre for The Edge from 4 years ago will give you a good grounding into platform business models and how they are still really in their infancy.

Platform Pull
By John Hagel

Please remember there are many more resources on The Digital Transformation People for you to enjoy. Including the Leading Digital podcast series and the excellent executive briefing book summaries prepared for you by our very own Neil Rainey.

To get help with any of these topics contact us and we’ll connect you with the knowledge, talent and specialist service providers in our network who can help you.

If you enjoy News In Digital…
Please share with your network and colleagues and encourage them to subscribe too. Your support is much appreciated.

Please don’t forget to add us to your contacts and help avoid the spam filter.
Read the archives
Follow us on LinkedIn
Contact us

~ Tim Ellis, CEO and Founder
The Digital Transformation People

And finally, if you have time on your hands why not use it to become a Certified Digital Transformation Leader with this excellent course by Rob Llewellyn.