Gaining the digital advantage is about mindset, not technology
If the leadership and management teams are not aligned on new initiatives, says Moroney, then an organisation’s chances of becoming digitally mature are diminished.
When lecturing to a wide range of audiences, the US Air Force pilot and military strategist Colonel John Boyd supposedly would bark: “People, ideas, machines — in that order!”
Boyd’s military thinking has been influential in the business world, but his emphasis on project success not coming from new technology bears revisiting, with most organisations now undergoing some form of digital transformation.
Critically, Boyd believed success came from the intersections between technology and people, the ideas of those people, and the organisations and businesses they belong to.
An updated version of Boyd’s concept might be: “People, process, technology.”
But Tony Moroney, programme director for the Irish Management Institute’s Digital Leadership diploma, believes organisations must go far beyond this framework to prioritise how digital enables better customer experiences.
“You need to start right at the top in terms of purpose and strategy,” said Mr Moroney, speaking on the IMI’s Talking Leadership podcast.
“And work right through to customer relationships, customer touchpoints, your value proposition — essentially everything to do with the customer experience. Because digital pervades every aspect of the organisation, you need to have a holistic view but also need to break it down. Within that, you need to understand just how aligned the organisation is.”
Buy-in and alignment are critical for successful digital leadership. If the leadership and management teams are not aligned on new initiatives, says Moroney, then an organisation’s chances of becoming digitally mature are diminished.
However, digital maturity is not all about technology. “You can be digitally mature by addressing core parts of your business,” Moroney stresses.
“Being clear on your vision. Being effective in how you communicate with your people. Having real clarity on your customer journeys by understanding what the customer is trying to do. Ensuring your processes are end-to-end and fully joined up. Utilising data and customer insights. Reskilling — both yourself and your people.”
Moroney believes the biggest challenge to be overcome is mindset.
"But it’s vital to look at digital transformation as a strategic imperative, and not just as a technology project.”
What separates organisations like Netflix and Uber, says Moroney, is they start by looking at what the customer wants — and then focus on how their technology can enable a better customer experience.
“Stealing Netflix’s technology won’t make you Netflix. You won’t have their culture of innovation and customer-centricity.”
Organisations like Netfllix and Uber also educate people in terms of what sort of customer experience we should expect from other providers, believes Moroney, which can have a knock-on effect for an organisation’s competitiveness.
“If your customers are more digitally mature than you and your organisation can’t provide them with the experience they want, that’s a problem. But if your competitors are more digitally mature than you and provide a better customer experience — that’s a catastrophe.”
Although disruption has always been a constant threat, the rise of digital technologies has accelerated the pace of disruption. Recent history is littered with corpses like Kodak and Blockbuster, once market leaders who either did not understand digital disruption or chose to ignore it.
Other groups like Sony, although still a multi-billion dollar company today, fought a war against disruptive new technologies like streaming and have seen their market-share significantly reduced over the last two decades. Once emerged, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle.
But why didn’t these organisations see it coming? Again, it comes back to mindset.
Speaking in 2019, futurist Tony Hunter believes there is a general overestimation of how quickly things will happen, but a catastrophic underestimation of impact.
“People think linearly, but technology and its impact are exponential. People might consider something a failure if it takes seven or eight years to happen rather than four or five years as promised, but they dramatically underestimate the impact once it starts taking off. It’s about overcoming linear mindsets when thinking about technology.”
The iPhone had a troubled multi-year production process. With constant delays and setbacks, from a traditional (linear) project management standpoint, the iPhone was a failure pre-2007.
When the iPhone was released in 2007, Kodak’s digital camera sales were at an all-time high. By 2009, Kodak was taking out multi-million dollar loans as a result of falling stock value due to the iPhone.
In 2010, Kodak was removed from the S&P 500 and in 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy. It was not a traditional competitor like Fujifilm that proved Kodak’s downfall, it was an outside competitor it did not see coming and had been around since 1976 — Apple.
Because threats can come from anywhere and totally transform an industry, Moroney believes it is vital that organisations are totally clear on what their mission and purpose for existing is, and truly understanding what their customer wants.
While markets may always be offset by novel competitors eating into traditional revenue centres, Moroney believes leaders should ask themselves a few simple questions:
“Why do we exist? Where are we going? How are we going to get there? What are we going to do to make that happen?
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