Digital Transformation Highlights -Find Your Why And Build Your People

Cristina Duta, Director of Intelligent Automation, AECOM

One of the current buzzwords across the world is ‘digital transformation,’ for which the pandemic played the role of a catalyzer. Yet, there are still many organizations that have struggled to achieve the desired results after implementing large-scale digital transformations. The main reason is related to the mentality, as companies tend to focus on ‘what’ digital transformation is and ‘how’ it can be executed. But every digital transformation journey should start with finding the ‘why’ – why would you want your company to embark on this journey? Why is digital transformation meaningful? Once you find your ‘why,’ the ‘how,’ and the ‘what’ will quickly connect and align and will set your company to be agile, flexible, and ready to grow.

Going back at the definition of digital transformation, it is difficult to pinpoint it as it has different meanings for each company - there is no one size fits all definition or implementation. Different factors contribute, such as your industry, your organizational culture, and your digital maturity (technology capabilities and business processes). 

Holistically, digital transformation is the new era of business ‘reinvention’: changing the companies’ cultures and hierarchies, shifting to human-centric and customer[1]centric approaches, reimagining current business models, and creating new opportunities using technology.

Once you have determined what digital transformation means to your organization and ‘the why,’ focus on sharing the vision & mission with your employees. Keeping the human experience (customers or employees) as the core focus of your digital transformation will reveal key insights on how to create better experiences and how to integrate technology capabilities with human needs and align them with your company’s business goals. Be transparent about what will be achieved with the transformation, what you are transforming, what changes are required, and how you will do it together with them by defining SMART business objectives.

"Keeping human experience as a core focus of your digital transformation will reveal key insights on how to create better experiences and how to integrate technology capabilities with human needs and align them with your company’s business goals"

Nowadays, there is too much ‘technology’ focus as part of digital transformation. While ‘technology’ and ‘processes’ are an essential part of the roadmap, all digital transformations should start with ‘people,’ with building a strong organizational culture as a ‘human-centric’ approach is the ‘catalyst’ for ‘successful transformations.’

The first step is to create a ‘growth mindset’ by embracing the challenges, persisting in the face of setbacks, seeing and recognizing the efforts related to change, being open and learning from criticism, and finding inspiration in the success of others. This will lead to building a forward-thinking organization that invests in its people, organically adapts to the surrounding environment, focuses on up-skilling people, and evolves over time.

Secondly, while everyone is aware that technology is evolving extremely fast compared with human learning and knowledge, leading to a digital skill gap, this should be a showstopper for your transformation. Invest in your people, in their minds, and their decision-making capabilities to empower your digital transformation. Highlight their growth opportunities in new business areas (cross[1]skilling) or emerging technologies (up[1]skilling) and make it a meaningful work where they can focus on self-development for the future of work.

“You don’t build a business – you build people – and then people build your business” - the words of legendary Zig Ziglar are proof that having a human[1]centric strategy will lead to creating your future Digital Workforce. A workforce focused on growth, having an automation mindset, reinventing how you work, thriving in creating new business models and in accelerating efficiencies, and leading with innovation.