Leaders build cultures and cultures build teams.

Digital Transformation is the inescapable buzzword for implementing & adopting software. It’s effectively positioned as a magically complex category. Mostly, it’s not.

You’ve heard the quote:

“if you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”

These sources speak to a pragmatic mindset, and frankly, there isn’t a lot of good writing out there on the topic. It’s mostly a remixed sales pitch so I’ll share what’s available, do more writing of my own, and add some video.

Articles

Why Companies Do “Innovation Theater” Instead Of Actual Innovation by Steve Blank in Harvard Business Review

People, Not Technology, Are Key To Digital Transformation by David Brown in Forbes

HBR Embraces Agile At Scale: Rethinking How We Live And Work by Steve Denning in Forbes

Why So Many High-Profile Digital Transformation Fail by Thomas H. Davenport and George Westerman in Harvard Business Review

Continuous Testing: Surveys show contradictions in how much is actually happening in the enterprise by Matthew Huesser in Tech Republic

Transformation Isn’t Digital

Talking Too Much About Transformation

The “Buy-In” Scam

Signal Up, Noise Down

Change Is Not New

Buy-In: You Have It Or You Don’t

Uncomfortable Truths

• “Digital” is the smallest piece of Digital Transformation
• Talking about it actually creates resistance, asking permission is a death knell
• “Buy-in” and complexity are sales scams

The way I think about Digital Transformation is this: new filing cabinets. A CRM is a digital filing cabinet. An ERP is a fancy digital filing cabinet. An HRM is a digital filing cabinet. Sure, there are some automation and analysis features that used to require humans but software systems are all fundamentally the same: a database (filing cabinet) and features to store, retrieve and analyze information (the work).

Seriously: Silicon Valley’s main trick is just shoving things into a database and pulling them out again. I’m exaggerating, but only a bit.

— Clive Thompson in Wired