Why COVID-19 matters in your digital transformation?
The meme below has been circulating on the Internet in the last months. I’ve already received it in several languages and it was popular on social media. It comes in slightly different versions, but the message is always the same: Coronavirus has accelerated your company’s “Digital Transformation” more than any previous efforts.
A high number of people I know agree with this message to some degree. Besides being funny, it seems to make sense! In the wake of Coronavirus, businesses were forced to shutdown and a high percentage of the workforce in most companies had no option but to work from home.
IT departments were pushed to their limits, ensuring that the devices and infrastructure necessary to keep business running was rapidly made available. Companies in initial phases of adoption of “bring your own device” and “cloud”, among many other “digital transformation” policies, had to accelerate deployment to warp speeds. But is that what digital transformation is about? Personally, I have a problem with that.
“Companies in initial phases of adoption of ‘bring your own device’ and ‘cloud’, among many other ‘digital transformation’ policies, had to accelerate deployment to warp speeds. But is that what digital transformation is about? Personally, I have a problem with that.”
To begin with, we all need to admit, there’s no clear cut definition of what digital transformation is. We can discuss, however, what digital transformation is not about. Digital transformation is not about crossing a finish line where business success awaits at the other side. Digital transformation is also not about deploying a set number of systems, devices or applications after which you can declare victory over your competition. Most importantly, digital transformation is not about key results that you can measure and tell you how far or close you are from getting there. Digital transformation is not an end-state.
“Tracking digital adoption or transformation with key results may lead to frequent frustration with ever-moving targets: when you get there it is likely no longer relevant.”
Tracking digital adoption or transformation with key results may lead to frequent frustration with ever-moving targets: when you get there it is likely no longer relevant. But why is that? To try to answer this question, I invite you to follow me in one more of my quick philosophical dives: for digital transformation, does essence come before existence or does existence define essence?
I am taking this from Jean Paul Sartre’s contribution to existentialism, and his idea that human existence precedes essence. As such, you are who you are because of the choices you make and not the other way around. According to Sartre, we humans are not a product of design, driven by purpose to act in a certain way. We act in the way we do because of the choices we make, because of the path we chose, at every minute along the way.
Digital transformation is a set of many choices on a path that enhances human’s ability to exist. This way, digital transformation exists first and, as it goes, define its essence, which will be permanently changing. The digital transformation goals of today will not be the goals of tomorrow because the human condition will invariably be different, despite having ultimately common underlying survival needs. Our choices along the way keep defining our essence.
During the Spanish Flu, schools were also closed to contain the spread. Their answer for remote learning involved phones, while our answer to the same problem uses Zoom. Schools with enough phone lines to connect students in 1919 could claim being successful at their “digital transformation” (even though the phones were analog). A school in 2020 with a million phone lines and no Zoom accounts would easily have to close the doors for good, risking ceasing to exist.
The pandemic we are living through may have forced the unrestricted adoption of telecommuting; the unlimited distribution of portable devices to you workforce; and, important mentioning, the unprecedented accelerated adoption of cloud, to quickly provision infrastructure components necessary for businesses to continue to “exist”. I call this “leveraging digital for surviving” rather than digital transformation. What most of us are doing is grabbing the tools available along the way to continue to survive without fundamentally changing, for now, our essence.
“Some of our choices are actually hurting us! For example, more people are reporting being exhausted of Zoom and video calls, longing for good old-fashioned face-to-face meetings. “
Choices we are now making and branding “digital transformation” are mere band-aids that may not bring the expected lasting impact, and will likely be removed when we can default back to the ways of working we were comfortable with. Some of our choices are actually hurting us! For example, more people are reporting being exhausted of Zoom and video calls, longing for good old-fashioned face-to-face meetings. What was a comfortable technology product at first, is slowly becoming a burden. But it doesn’t need to be this way.
COVID brought us an opportunity to quickly prototype and validate solutions and hypothesis that could be solidified in new ways of working, effectively changing our essence for better and leaving a lasting impact. There is an insurmountable amount of data being collected from user interaction with different devices; from people connecting to corporate systems from an unprecedented number of remote and different locations; from a never-seen before volume of online-only business being done; from employees forcing themselves to work in unusual ways that keeps changing by the day. This data is a treasure chest for any (and I really mean any) product roadmap! What are we doing about this data? What are you doing about your own experiences? Can any of that be used to define better strategies and actions that will result in changing the essence of your digital transformation?
Digital transformation doesn’t have a pre-defined purpose. It is, rather, the result of a succession of human engagements and choices with technology not based on design, but based instead on a projection of human intent through technology. When people are forced to mostly express their intent through technology because of a pandemic as we are all going through, there comes an opportunity to accelerate prototyping ideas that will make everybody’s experience better.
“Not understanding how COVID matters in your digital transformation may send you back years in your digital effort because of digital fatigue.”
If we just keep putting a cast to support us while we heal thinking this is what digital transformation is about, we are wasting a — hopefully — one-in-a-century opportunity. As we go through this crisis, we should always remember never to “let a good crisis go to waste”. Not understanding how COVID matters in your digital transformation may send you back years in your digital effort because of digital fatigue.
