A digital newsletter requires a digital review!

It’s nearly the end of 2019 and the end of a decade. It is a year that has witnessed many changes for me. As is wont, this is the end of the year review issue.

On to the update.

As I said, a year of lots of changes for me. I finally got my business up and running and will be profitable in the first year, yay! I have 6 clients this year, with a couple of sizeable projects, and others that I work with regularly, earning recurrent income. That’s pretty much how I envisaged it going this year, or to be fair, how I hoped it would go. Next year brings new objectives for me, fingers crossed it will happen.

Getting back to this Newsletter, it had been a significant undertaking and one that requires a lot of time to produce. As a reader, you might not see just how much effort is needed to write each article. There’s research, discussion, drafts, spells and grammar checking, layout and the publishing. These all take time, with each piece requiring something like 10 times the amount of time necessary to read at an average speed.

Much writing goes nowhere too. I get ideas all the time, some of them make it out the bin, others stay there for weeks, months or never see the light of day.

In all, I’d just like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you who read my writings, especially thanks to those of you who have taken the time to write back and give me precious feedback. It’s been an entertaining journey and one I intend to keep doing.

An analysis of the year

As I’m obsessed with digital and particularly data, I thought it would be a great idea to give you a few statistics related to this publication. Let’s dive in.

Not including this article and the last article of the year I’m hoping to get finished, I’ve actually written 50 newsletters. That’s an average of 1 per week, which was my initial (personal) goal, so I’m super-pleased to have achieved it. One article a week is probably the right cadence. However, I’d like to write a bit more now and again. I started the Considering the first article was published on the 6th of February, it is actually a little more than one per week, but we won’t split hairs 😉.

Those of you who were with me from the beginning, you’ll remember that I had initially promised to publish on a schedule, Friday mornings if my memory serves me. I wanted to instil a routine, hoping that it would promote readership over time. It did nothing of the sort in the end. Most people received the email, then read it as and when it was possible for them, work and personal commitments preceding - completely normal and understandable.

It took me a while to realise that it actually didn’t matter when the email was sent — give that email is an asynchronous medium — as people would open and read when it was convenient for them. Regardless, I am incredibly grateful for even one set of eyes to read my stuff 😀.

At the end of 2019, I’ll have written and published over 82000 words at an average of over 1500 words per email. I’m quite pleased with that amount as it falls precisely in line with what I’d hoped for. I’d had feedback that the newsletter was long and wordy, and the other newsletters are more pictorial and flashy and that I should do that, but that is not what this newsletter is intended to do.

The intent is to inform, discuss and delve into detail on topics surrounding digital technologies, their use in transforming business and society. Simple infographics and meme-able images just can’t convey the necessary subtitles in this changing world. There are newsletters and other mediums for that; I chose not to go down that route. It’s why people buy books instead of reading pithy 3-line quick takes on essential topics.

Another statistic. According to Ulysses — my writing app of choice — it would take the average reader over five and a half hours to read this years’ posts. I’ve basically written a books' worth of content in 12 months.

But here we are, living in an attention economy, and the only real statistics that count are the ones that are least interesting (in my view)… To wit, 'views' and 'open rates'.

My newsletter is read all across the Caribbean, and several thousands of views have been registered. That’s a pretty good start and one I hope will expand in the coming months. The newsletter commands an open rate of around 40%, which is double the average. Mailchimp reports open rates of 21.33% on average, with Consulting and Tech newsletters receiving rates of 20% or below.

To finish off this short post, take a look at the word cloud image below, it was produced using an export of the text data and running it through Microsoft’s venerable data visualisation tool, PowerBI. It represents the frequency of the words I wrote this year. Unsurprisingly, Digital and Transformation come out on top, followed closely by data, business and Caribbean. That’s what I expected for my newsletter. It is going to be interesting to compare this with next years’ graphic, will Digital Transformation be the dominant subject going forward in the industry… I doubt it.

The most-read articles this year

The Digitalisation of Business

This issue was more of a historical reference issue, the idea, to give context to what we experience today and show how businesses have been transforming themselves digitally for years with varying degrees of success.

The issue also tried a new idea, that of critiquing a local app/platform, in this instance Bodio.

What is Digital Transformation?

This article was the starting point to explaining Digital Transformation and hence a profoundly historical document in content. It allowed me to express and explore the past of digitisation and send out markers for where the newsletter was going. I was delighted with the results.

A look at Digital in the Caribbean

An immensely successful article that wrote up the findings of my research into the Caribbean digital infrastructure landscape. It really resonated with readers and was republished on other blogs around the Caribbean (with permission).

Digital Transformation is Dead

I wrote the title to provoke a reaction, and I got one. One unsubscribe from a media agency! Unsurprising really, as I kind of hit out at the pithy and shallow exploitation of the term Digital Transformation in business today, mainly as a result of media agencies hijacking the name to mean digital marketing. I don’t have any issue with that apart from the fact that it makes my job a lot harder to explain what I do…, that’s a good thing to be fair.

The least well-received

The Practical Series

I had grand ambitions for this series, as I’d had some feedback from people requesting concrete help and outlines on how to “do Digital Transformation”. Despite my efforts, it didn’t quite go as I’d hoped.

I’m guessing the reality of doing it in situ is a much harder pill to swallow. Laying bare the excruciating dullness of it exposed the real problem we humans suffer endlessly; we don’t realise we don’t want it until we’ve actually got it, then it’s too late!

The real-world consequences of not transforming

Pretty much in the same vein as the above article. 🤦‍♂️

Canal+ and Netflix sitting in a tree…

I was surprised this one didn’t get as much traction as I’d hoped as I thought the subject was entertaining and one that had some great pointers for businesses in the Caribbean not necessarily streaming. I didn’t prove to be the case. You live, and you learn!

Takeaways

It would appear that I have a talent for writing both factual and historical articles that inform and put into context how we have got where we are today. They are the most read and appreciated articles I write. I intend to continue down that route and see where it takes me.

It stands to reason to be fair. For years I’ve written Tender response documents and documentation. I’ve also written research findings documents, and it is something that while painful and off-putting for most, I actually love doing them.

I love the research challenge, the understanding and then the ability to express that in a concise but captivating manner. I’ve recently had the opportunity to write a research paper (not affiliated to a University sadly, but I’d love to) at over 17K words of which I loved every minute. Let me know if you like to have more information.

All this to say, thank you so much for your support in this, my first year of regularly publishing a newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you keep reading and passing on the articles (hassling your friends into subscribing too 😉). I intend to carry on and plan to do a few new things next year.

Have a great holiday, and I’ll see you in the new decade.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interested in Digital Technologies and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

They’re not always for good. It's more complicated than that.

Reports of my demise (writing for this newsletter) have been greatly exaggerated.

On to this weeks’ briefing.

If it is not apparent, I am quite positive and reasonably optimistic about digital technologies and what they can do for us in business, but also what they can help us with for society. Steve Jobs once said that computers were like bicycles for the mind. He referred to a study done for Scientific American, where the Condor was outclassed by a human using a bicycle in terms of efficiency (distance travelled versus calories used). Humans classed well blow average without the bicycle.

But like any tool, digital technology is neither conscious nor sentient and is entirely amoral, as in without morals. Here are some tales of the negative aspects of digitalisation in our lives.

I put them here for discussion, and I make no judgement on them for the moment. I’m hoping to write about my complicated feelings on the subject and what we as individuals can do when we have issues of cognitive dissonance built up by using digital tech. Bear with me.

Google Maps goes Incognito

Google Maps on iOS has finally introduced an In Cognito mode. In Cognito, for those that don’t know, is a mode whereby the product, in this case, Google Maps, no longer permanently stores searched, GPS data and other personally identifying information on Google’s servers via the signed-in Google Account. Great news for lots of reasons, mainly ones that involve gaining a little privacy in one’s movements around the globe. It does, however, beg the question of what Google has been doing with data in the meantime. That’s for another day.

However, it doesn’t come without trade-offs. Any personalised features, like restaurant suggestions based on historical location data, no longer work. Google is indeed a digital company, and by that, I mean binary. It is either on or off. You either get privacy or none.

Announced in the same blog post, Google will provide a tool to bulk delete places you’ve visited through Google Maps Timeline feature.

With bulk delete, you can quickly find and delete multiple places from your Timeline and Location History all at once. You’ll still have the ability to delete all or part of your Timeline by date range from your Location History settings. 

Make no mistake. These features are a result of pressure from impeding cases on privacy violations amongst others, around the world. As Venture Beat put it:

The search giant’s renewed focus on privacy features follows several high-profile headlines over the past year, such as the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data scandal. A Wall Street Journal report last summer revealed that Google+, Google’s social network, failed to disclose an exploit that might have exposed the data of more than 500,000 users. Following the news, Google announced that Google+ would formally shut down for consumers in August 2019, following a 10-month wind-down period.

The exit to the left-of-stage of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have left some to speculate that it is an abdication of responsibility ploy to avoid direct involvement in any future punishment. It’s hard to tell, but it isn’t outside the realms of possibility.

DNA, Genealogy and getting locked up

Wired reports that Verogen has just purchased an obscure genealogy website called GEDmatch. On the face of it, it seems innocent enough and not much to cause worry. Until, that is you understand about its history and recent events.

GEDmatch was an unknown site competing with the giants like Ancestry.com and FindMyPast.com. GEDmatch was a free site being run by a couple of men that are particularly talented in writing algorithms that ostensibly helped people find their relatives. Popular, in that it had around 1 million users, it was privacy by obscurity.

This all changed in April of 2018 when police used the site to identify a suspect in the 40-year-old the Golden State Killer cold case. Using the crime scene DNA in a rape case in Ventura County, police uploaded the DNA profile to GEDmatch. The site listed 10 to 20 distant relatives, whom all shared the same great-great-great-grandparents. After more investigation and elimination, police finally arrived at two suspects and ruled one out by a further DNA test, finally identifying the suspected culprit who is currently being held awaiting trial — a positive outcome

Verogen is a forensics giant and has a longstanding reputation of working with law enforcement to solve violent crimes using proprietary familial matching algorithms. This is where some conflict is brewing on the use of this technology when it is coupled with, for all intents and purposes, innocent user’s curiosity to build their family tree. Oblivious to the reality, family members a being dragged (with our consent) into helping identify suspects of crimes. In some instances, it is no longer what you’ve done that gets you caught, but what others are doing around you.

Some genealogists are already protesting and withdrawing support for this type of intrusion. Others are more hopeful that better policies and regulations surrounding Verogen will ultimately secure the database from abusive investigative powers.

It nuanced, isn’t it!

Any data, it seems, has value

In the US, California’s DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) is selling drivers’ personal data for 50 million dollars.

From Motherboard:

DMVs across the country are selling data that drivers are required to provide to the organization in order to obtain a license. This information includes names, physical addresses, and car registration information. California’s sales come from a state which generally scrutinizes privacy to a higher degree than the rest of the country.

In a public record acts request, Motherboard asked the California DMV for the total dollar amounts paid by commercial requesters of data for the past six years. The responsive document shows the total revenue in financial year 2013/14 as $41,562,735, before steadily climbing to $52,048,236 in the financial year 2017/18.

The widespread abuse of data from each State’s DMV has ended up in multiple DMVs cancelling and restricting access to personal data. In California’s case, the requesters and buyers have not been revealed, but speculation has put LexisNexis on that list. LexisNexis is a data broker, and the final resting place of that data is not likely to please some. Some speculation suggests that data is also being sold to private investigators, one of which specialises in finding if spouses are cheating.

I’ve not come to a conclusion yet

I’ve highlighted a couple of instances where digital technology causes problems rather than saving them. And, if I’m honest, we all believed in those early days of the Internet, that things would be used only for positive means. That looks a little naive nowadays, much like how we were naive in thinking that nuclear science would only be used for the good of the people.

I have a complicated relationship with digital tools. On the one hand, they’re my bread and butter and the reason I have a job. I owe my life to them — I once sold a car to buy a computer, preferring to walk and catch the bus as long as I could compute. But on the other, I realise the danger of them, and how some take technology to produce the worst in humans.

I’m still working it out. Let me know your thoughts.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interested in Digital Technologies and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

I've updated the website. Let me know if you want me to resend an updated email

For nearly two hours I’ve been agonising whether I should send another email to let you know that I do know how to count and that I just made a quick editing mistake and had 10 items in the list and not 9 as the text suggested. 🤦‍♂️

I’ve fixed it on the website, but if you’d prefer the updated version by email I’d be more than happy to resend it if you request. 👍

This is what I thought of immediately after spotting the error:

Cleveland: Well what on earth does that mean?

Chapman: I don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

(JARRING CHORD)

W(The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain (Palin) enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles (Jones) has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang (Gilliam) is just Cardinal Fang)

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. (Exit and exeunt)

Chapman: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

(JARRING CHORD)

(The cardinals burst in)

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn! (To Cardinal Biggles) I can't say it - you'll have to say it.

http://www.montypython.net/scripts/spanish.php

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Apple’s correction course — undoing poor design decisions and ignoring theory

Sign up now

I’m a little late getting this one out the door, having not written an update last week at all. My apologies. Life got in the way, preventing me from taking the time to sit down, research and write the email. It’s a long process and demands a lot of concentration-time, something that is increasingly difficult to find for good reasons. Truth be told, I’d been working on several projects concurrently and hadn’t gouged time in the week to produce something of quality. Ho-hum. I’ll do better next time.

One to the update.

The new MacBook Pro, CAST data and Outcome-Driven Innovation

Image: Apple Inc.

Six days ago, Apple Inc. announced and released a new redesign to its venerable workhorse, the MacBook Pro. This release shows us why the Jobs-to-be-Done theory is so critical and so powerful when we use its potential in business decisions.

First, a little history about the MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pro started life in 2006 when Apple transitioned its entire line of computers from the PowerPC processor platform to Intel. The transition was a big deal and was expertly managed, providing current users with a sustainable upgrade path and new users the ability to run existing PowerPC-based applications with the need to purchase upgrades or other things to continue their work. The transition worked so well with specifically, a high-quality PowerPC emulation, that some argued that it slowed potential sales of the new laptop devices that Apple renamed as the MacBook Pro. On the PowerPC platform, they were referred to as PowerBooks. Interestingly, Apple did two things with the name change; they differentiated the old from the new with a new strand of computers names, and at the same time disassociated the name of the laptops with the processor family, having been burnt with the slow evolution of IBM’s PowerPC. It would never happen again.

The MacBook Pro gained popularity in the pro-market reasonably quickly and eventually became one of Apple’s best-selling computers to the general public, despite its high-end pricing. The MacBook Pro became “the” computer to own. It could do everything. It was as fast as a desktop; it was portable and had a decent battery life for a device as mobile as it was.

It exuded quality and attention to detail in its design. It was a joy to use and offered a breath of fresh air to users who had bought one instead of a standard corp-type laptop from the period. From a hardware perspective, it had two simultaneous stand-out features that no other notebook had at the time, a near-perfect trackpad and an excellent keyboard. Some had decent, and in some circumstances, great keyboards (ThinkPad anyone?) and there were a couple with a half-decent trackpad, none had both.

Subsequent revisions and evolutions to the MacBook Pro brought lighter, thinner laptops and a new design debuted in 2008 using a single slab of Aluminium to carve out the shell of the notebook, baptised Unibody by Apple. This design enabled a slew of innovations as the electronics could be better fit into the chassis with better reliability due to its robust structure. IT gained widescreen, a larger trackpad. All advances that responded to the wants and needs of the professional class and general users alike. The designs pushed the envelope and allowed Apple to gain significantly its market-share of portable computers sold worldwide.

Outcomes drove design decisions, and the sales figures and customer satisfaction statistics confirmed this. Apple has consistently been top of the list for Personal Computers in the American Customer Satisfaction Index since 2004 with a score of 83 out of 100. What Apple was practising was, in fact, Outcome-Driven Innovation.

Jobs-to-be-Done theory

Jobs-to-be-Done theory started life called “Outcome-Driven Innovation” and funnily-enough, was a theory developed out of a disaster experienced by IBM when they tried to create a new type of PC market with a computer that few will remember, the PCjr.

IBM’s PCjr was marketed by IBM for just over one year, March 1984 to May 1985, and shipped a terrible quantity of just 500000 units. Remember, shipped units have nothing to do with “Sold numbers, and IBM had only managed to sell around 250000 units by January 1985. It was an embarrassment for IBM and would hold back their production of home-oriented computers by nearly five years when they introduced the PS/1.

Tony Ulwick, who was on IBM’s product team as an engineer, wondered how, when the PCjr was announced, why the press were able to predict that the computer would flop accurately. He asked if they used data and metrics to evaluate the chances of success or failure and if those metrics were right or not. After several months he came up with a hypothesis:

“It seemed to me that if a product team could know what metrics its customers were going to use to judge its new offering well in advance of product development, it could design the product to address those metrics and predictably deliver a winning solution.”

The hypothesis generated many complex questions like what metrics? Captured how, by whom, when?

The answer to these questions and others eventually led to Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI). ODI was subsequently tested outside IBM in 1991:

“… to help Cordis Corporation introduce a new line of angioplasty balloons. This led to a dramatic increase in market share (from about 1% to over 20%) and was the first of many successes.”

Clayton Christensen published the first edition, of what became a hugely influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997. Soon after Tony Ulwick presented his recently developed and tested ideas, ODI, as a solution to the issues outlined in Christensen’s book. The Innovator’s Solution first published in 2003, described how ODI could be used by businesses to develop and market innovations that would respond directly to the jobs that people were trying to perform, alternatively called, jobs to be done. The book renamed ODI as Jobs-to-be-Done Theory.

Theories are nothing more than a set of principles or beliefs that are proffered to help explain things that have already been observed with data. A huge sales increase in one line of products compared to another is found, then a theory is derived to try and explain why, with the aim to repeat that success for a new product line. Jobs-to-be-Done theory is no different; the original data was a tank in sales of a newly introduced computer with an approach developed, ODI, that was corroborated by its use in a completely different context. Jobs-to-be-Done Theory attempts to explain how we can make innovation more predictable, something I’m sure many businesses would love to do, particularly in the digital context of today’s markets.

The theory describes nine beliefs as the way to start to develop predictable growth:

1. People buy products and services to get a “job” done.

2. Jobs are functional, with emotional and social components.

3. A Job-to-be-Done is stable over time.

4. A Job-to-be-Done is solution agnostic.

5. Success comes from making the “job”, rather than the product or the customer, the unit of analysis.

6. A deep understanding of the customer’s “job” makes marketing more effective and innovation far more predictable.

7. People want products and services that will help them get a job done better and/or more cheaply

8. People seek out products and services that enable them to get the entire job done on a single platform

9. Innovation becomes predictable when “needs” are defined as the metrics customers use to measure success when getting the job done

Understanding these brings insights into a company or department, fostering better innovation development.

Looking at each of these beliefs through the lens of the MacBook Pro, we can see how Apple may have used this theory to design one of the best computers money can buy.

The Jobs-to-be-Done of the MacBook Pro

When people buy a product or a service, they do so to get a “job” done. In the case of the MacBook Pro there are hundreds, possibly thousands of jobs to be done. Photographers need to edit their photos. Filmmakers need to produce their works and podcasters need to record, edit and upload the next episode from a hotel room. But there are many other jobs that need fulfilling, those of office workers needing to have a good screen and portability to take around to the various meetings in the buildings in which they work. Nothing new here and nothing the previous generations couldn’t do. But there was one job that was fulfilled by early generations that got ignored or simply excluded because it wasn’t deemed necessary, that of the writer needing to type on the laptop for hours per day, reliably.

When Apple introduced the 4th generation 13” and 15” models, Apple declared proudly that they had redesigned the keyboard, inaugurating a new butterfly mechanism that replaced the long-running scissor mechanism. It was universally panned and soon after there are lots of reports about the keyboard’s reliability, or lack thereof. Apple doubled down, eventually producing three versions of the butterfly keyboard that was said to be more reliable. But the problem wasn’t just the reliability. It was also the experience of using the keyboard. Some liked it — personally, I’m indifferent — and others hated it.

Which is where the second belief applies. Emotional and social components are sometimes more important than the functional ones. Many non-professionals used MacBook Pros to have or to show they had Apple’s latest and greatest, is both emotional and social Apple nailed the JTBD. However, many professionals publicly slammed the keyboard because the emotional experience of typing on it for long periods was sub-optimal. The emotional component was not being catered for, in this instance.

We note that the Jobs-to-be-Done was stable over time, sales figures and the uses of the MacBook Pro tend to agree with this, but the danger for Apple was the fourth belief; it is solution agnostic. There were many rumours and many YouTube videos of pros and amateurs alike, looking at moving to other brands’s laptops to get their work done, despite leaving the very-agreeable world of macOS.

I’m guessing Apple will see a significant uptick in the sales of this new generation, aligning to the fifth belief; the “job” is the unit of analysis and not the product. A better experience will inevitably lead to better sales. Particularly for a cohort of already-onboard fans and professionals. Leading neatly to the sixth belief, centred around marketing, looking at Apple’s newsroom page announcing the MacBook Pro, there it is in the first sentence of the second paragraph:

“Featuring a new Magic Keyboard with a redesigned scissor mechanism and 1mm travel for a more satisfying key feel, the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers the best typing experience ever in a Mac notebook.

Third paragraph (emphasis mine):

“Our pro customers tell us they want their next MacBook Pro to have a larger display, blazing-fast performance, the biggest battery possible, the best notebook keyboard ever, awesome speakers and massive amounts of storage, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers all of that and more,” said Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. 

Belief seven is targeted in the fact that new MacBook Pro is squarely aimed at getting more work done, easier and faster on one device (belief 8). I think we can expect more marketing (which is just an expression of the data being collected about the Jobs-to-be-Done) about how the new model is saving/enhancing/fulfilling lives of its users. Apple will use the poor feedback from previous the generations’ to better design the future.

For what it’s worth, my entire business was built using this theory. In nearly a year of business, meeting potential clients, I haven’t had a single remark from an owner that my services are not something they want or need. It is unanimously positive and responds almost entirely to what businesses are seeking for in help and guidance on Digital Transformation.

I thank Tony Ulwick and his article on Medium that first exposed the theory to me: https://jobs-to-be-done.com/the-5-tenets-of-jobs-to-be-done-theory-ba58c3a093c1

The Future is Digital is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

A rant about the semantics and meaning

A little different today, but bear with me as I climb on to my soapbox to rant about Digital Transformation. 😉

Upfront, I apologise, I’m sorry.

On to the update/rant.

The phrase Digital Transformation, and why it is misused

I understand the lure; honestly, I do. It’s a snappy phrase and something that evokes moving forward and resolving problems, but boy do I dislike the phrase Digital Transformation! Odd indeed for a consultant that has created a business solely to help companies with their Digital Transformations!

Why do I dislike the phrase then, when it’s contributing to feeding the family? Surely I should embrace the phrase, lean in and exploit its use the maximum amount of advantage to my business? That would be the most obvious thing to do os course. But I’ve never been simple, or standard. I’m an Englishman in the French West Indies for Christ’s sake!

I have no liking, nor affection for the phrase “Digital Transformation” because of what it has become and what it means to most people. I'm a little melodramatic of course, but let me explain, but first a short history for context.

When we first started this journey computerising and digitalising businesses, we had clear goals and clear objectives that were easily measured: "13% productivity increase in the process", "240% increase in efficiency". It was simple; solutions existed, or solutions were created quickly to respond to easily identifiable business problems.

Neumann’s calculating machine, albeit discussed in an academic paper, proved that simple calculations repeatedly exercised regularly in business, automated easily with significant gains in productivity. Something that took teams of “Meatware” hours or days to perform could be done in minutes and hours. The benefits were obvious. The imagined savings only served to facilitate the implementation of the computers that would eventually hit the market.

The introduction of more powerful computers and ultimately Smartphones had had profound effects on how businesses operate today, from the 1960s when IBM introduced the System 360 to today’s tablet/PC hybrid computers that are always-on, always mobile and always connected to the network, be it wifi, LTE or the coming 5G. Business processes are now performed, managed and analysed in near-realtime, anywhere on the planet and at any time. This shift in paradigm is hugely important to understand when you undertake your business operations transformations.

My discussion is leading to where there is much to do, Business Operations. Digital Transformation has been hijacked by marketing and opportunists to mean something that it is not, or more accurately, something smaller than it is in reality.

If we look at one of the better definitions (in my opinion), Digital Transformation is:

Digital Transformation is the methodology in which organizations transform and create new business models and culture with digital technologies.

First and foremost, a “methodology”, not a project, not a product and certainly not a service, you cannot buy twelve kilos of Digital Transformation from your local Digital Transformation Supermarket … for a good reason! Methodologies are developed, tested and refined on an ongoing basis, in situ within an organisation that is in the midst of transformation.

Secondly, organisational transformation — implying change — is hard, very hard. And transformation takes time and effort from all stakeholders, but when that change is Digital Transformation, it is exponentially more difficult. It requires a shift in mindset and is fraught with difficulties and traps all along the journey.

The third, and arguably one of the most critical elements in the definition, is the word new. New implies innovation, in the sense that we invent something new. Please don’t confuse it with revolution though. Innovation, as I’ve previously discussed, is a process where we look at existing ways of doing something and using tools and methodologies, and we construct a better way to — at the very least — achieve the same thing. Sometimes Innovation leads us to change the process, enabling hitherto unknown benefits. Structure, methodology and one other thing allow this.

That last thing is Culture. You have to change Culture to succeed in Digital Transformation, which is why, in 2013, McKinsey estimated that around 70% of all Digital Transformation projects were bound to fail and why Constellation Research’s annual Digital Transformation study for 2018 (published in January 2019) showed that 58% of internal staff were resistant to change, entailing an impediment to successful Digital Transformation. Respondents of the same survey returned that 67% of Leadership in any organisation was concerned and preoccupied with the change to organisational culture that would be required. But it’s not all bad news …

Of the projects for Digital Transformation that were completed successfully in 2018, 68% yielded a positive ROI, with only 9% responding that they didn’t. What do we conclude from this? Well, Digital Transformation is hard, something I’ve discussed at length, but the benefits are there, and they are achievable with the right help, methodologies and processes. Regardless of the reason for Digital Transformation, be it efficiency gains, building a competitive advantage in a market, innovating and creating a new market, the advantages to changing culture are repeatable and reusable benefits for all involved.

But I haven’t explained as yet why I dislike the phrase so much.

The phrase has been hijacked to mean digital marketing. Organisations around the globe are popping up offering “Digital Transformation” Services. When I look into this in detail, they are almost always digital marketing offices. Their services are valuable, and their services are necessary — in case you thought there were sour grapes —, but their services only respond to one small side of the requirements, and in some case resolve nothing.

Take, for example, an organisation that wants to develop a better, more flexible and efficient way of collecting data and displaying that information in a way that creates value for them and their clients. I’m currently working with one such company on a project whose goal is to do just that. We’ve been developing an interactive dashboard of decisional data that enables assessment of the efficiency of their third-party suppliers, their clients’ operations. Soon, we aim to be capable of predicting with reasonable accuracy the life span of the vital equipment in their clients’ sites. This is a business process, and no level of marketing input will change the fundamental operations digital transformation required. Ultimately, digital marketing will help us generalise, educate and sell our services to a broader market, but the fundamentals of the business must initially transform.

Another client of mine has an even more fundamental business process issue. They currently use much paper — stored for ten years — to plan, execute and record time spent on projects that are just screaming out for innovation using Digital Transformation. I’m setting up a small pilot project to assess whether my recommendations will bring the benefits estimated (I’m quietly confident incidentally).

There are hundreds of thousands of businesses out there in the Caribbean alone, that require, no need, help in transforming digitally.

Be a good citizen. Please forward this email on to them, talk to them and get them on board with a small (inexpensive) project for them to see the value of Digital Transformation immediately. Often, we can use mostly un-used but existing tools to achieve meaningful results.

Share

I said I didn’t like the phrase Digital Transformation, but secretly, I love it. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. Let me know how you get on.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.