Digital transformation: A strategy first perspective or tactical point innovations.
A recent conversation with a CPG major on the future of the industry in the digital world led to a debate on the right approach to enterprise digital transformation – what’s the start point, the journey, the destination and how to reach there? How does one best manage digital transformation? Can the digital transformation journey of an enterprise be strategized and stage managed or does one just rush in because innovations are best left un-managed and unstructured? Why deliberate a predictable model when the trend today is about trying fast, fail fast, fail predictably and iterating?
Lot is being written on the obituary of “strategy” in today’s fast pace world of digital business models. In new rules of the startup world where agility and pace are the usp’s, agile tactics fix the challenges each day advantaged flexible from any constraints of processes and plans. Slow and sequential making way for the fast and agile. I am reminded here of a news article from one of India’s reputed CEO’s discussing his early trips to Chinese cities in the early 2000’s. He talked about the diligent urban planning delivering benchmarks – with a place for everything and everything in place, everything exactly simulated where it should be on a miniature city model in contrast to the chaos in Bangalore city, a new flyover getting done only to just shift the bottleneck/ problem to another city location. Wish someone had a picture of the end view in the first place.
Agree there are no accurate forecasts into the future. When disruptions are inevitable, wait and watch is definitely not great idea and speed of action matters. Nevertheless everyone needs direction, a path and a tracker guide to intermittently validate with the set direction and course correct. Great business ideas have to be validated with industry knowledge, management science and backed with a good execution plans. Significant investments go into digital transformations where in-transit reviews are better than last mile rewinds. On one end we know of digital masters who have worked well to a strategic vision as industry leaders, there are other successful digital firms who have incrementally innovated.
The search is for the right balance between these schools of thought. Leveraging the best of both worlds – strategy with tactics, knowledgeable decisions with speedy executions – augmenting the passionate ideas with strategic planning and process could see better success rates in enterprise digital programs and start up initiatives.
In summary, enterprise wide digital transformation programs would benefit from a strategy first approach – set the direction, design the details, make it happen. Various innovation projects on this master program can be on AGILE.
