Lift the business up to the Hyper-cycle of Digital Transformation

From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, and structural actions.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice. "Change" can be a somewhat mechanical implementation of new or different ways of doing something while the digital transformation is more likely to be a sweeping approach to altering a system or parts of it. Running a digital business is complex because all things do interact, particularly in the case of nonlinear interactions and interdependent relationships. How to overcome barriers and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of business transformation?

Deburearcacry: Generally speaking, business management is about creating orders from chaos. The larger the organization and inputs are, the larger the amount of 'rules' are necessary for its functions to keep dependent variables and deliver stable output. Traditional management discipline brings a certain level of business efficiency. However, it is criticized by the lack of system perspective, encourage bureaucracy with characteristics such as inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, stagnation, unresponsiveness, or lack of creativity, etc. From the management perspective, in many cases, business managers don’t understand their ever-evolving dynamic business environment because they never look outside the problems boundaries. However, to keep information flow, business dynamic, and enforce the hyper growth cycle, the organization must step out of their comfort zone, flatten the overly rigid hierarchy, and battle bureaucracy which often stifles changes and creates bottlenecks for cross-functional communication and collaboration. Digital businesses are hyperconnected and interdependent, thus, business optimization and integration need to be done with a “big picture” - keep the business architecture in mind and make the business synchronized to ensure that every part of the organization operates in harmony to take a digital leap. Digital organizations are like living things which keep growing, they need to be in flow to operate smoothly. The more effortlessly you can guide, align, integrate, and optimize important business elements such as people, process, and technology, the closer you can accelerate business performance and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

Demystify innovation: Innovation is to have a new perspective on things, and it is the process that transforms novel ideas or knowledge into business value. Being competitive will have an innovation component, a new capability that unlocks a new market or revenue stream. Organizations should ideally have a sustainable approach to manage innovation, with a structured process and a set of practical tools for reaching high performance, making the profit, saving of resources, gaining the satisfaction of customers, or making collective progress etc. The business needs innovation silver lining from specific tools rising to an overall problem-solving system environment, and expand its influence with the ability to co-create and amplify innovation effect in a dynamic digital ecosystem. The challenge is how to get out of the daily burden and spend more resources and time on innovation-related activities. Exploring the business innovation should fully cover wide enough directions, and ultimately discover the path to demystify innovation and walk through the innovation labyrinth smoothly. Businesses which are able to innovate successfully at a breakthrough level and manage a balanced innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental innovation and radical innovation can increase the likelihood that they will prosper in exploring blue ocean new business model or market and lift their business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

Delight people: Consider the world as to self-organized but interlaced environments, and humans are vehicles of natural and cultural solutions. Organizations are made by people and run for people. Thus, people are essentially the most important creative engine to lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation. Investing and delighting people is critical for unleashing the potential of the business. People are always the weakest link in organizations, but the most invaluable asset and capital to invest in the business. The part of the digital transformation journey is actually to prepare people for the new structures and to recognize this is a crucial step. Thus, people development is crucial for the business’s long-term success. People should be encouraged to take initiatives of stepping outside of the box, seeking additional knowledge and experience, brainstorming fresh ideas, and focusing on the learning opportunities provided by assignment, rather than on the status quo. In fact, an employee's "book value" can be viewed as a function of what investments have been made in them and how they bring higher-than-expected business value.

From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, and structural actions. The purpose of going digital is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance for the long run. Ideally, the digital organizations are like the self-adaptive system which is able to re-configure their own structure and change their own behavior with its adaptation to environmental changes and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

Posted in: Digital Master,Digital Maturity