Three Effects Cloudy the Vision and Stifle the Speed of Digitalization

The forward-looking view of the organization is to determine what the future needs to look like, what the digitalization must look like; how to expand the lens for capturing the big picture.

Change is the new normal with increasing pace, digitalization is a radical change. The successful businesses are the ones that can manage change fluently and drive digitalization in a structural way. Now with the unprecedented business uncertainty, the volatile market situations, intense competitions, advanced technologies, and abundance of information, it is important to clarify the vision, anchor changes as new opportunities, avoid barriers and pitfalls on the way, and steer the business in the right direction. Here are three effects perhaps cloudy the vision and stifle the speed of digitalization.

Tunnel effect: Tunnel vision happens that every side of the fence, commercial and technical, under the silo walls, misbelieve the relevance and difficulties of each other’s works. Tunnel vision happens when people work as a GROUP, not as a cohesive TEAM. The tunnel effect causes bureaucracy, diminishes trust, decreases productivity, and decelerate business speed. The digital leaders and managers should make an objective assessment via asking themselves: Does department mean silo? A tunneled group capability? Or is it a group specialization with healthy and slim overlaps with others? You need to jump out of the tunnel to gain the full vision of the future and the holistic picture of the business. The talented people with cross-disciplinary skills can become the interface between both sides of the fence since they understand both jargons and are able to keep in line with both teams. Highly cohesive teams respect and trust each other so much they can challenge, argue, totally disagree, even contradict each other as they work together to produce the best solutions to either new problems or emerging issues. The digital leaders have to eliminate tunnel effect, bridge both industrial silos and digital divide today; with emerging digital technologies and powerful collaboration platforms, organizations can now have better opportunities to brainstorm ideas, share insight, and amplify the best and next digital practices for enforcing innovation and accelerating business speed.

Bandwagon effect: Bandwagon e=Effect is the tendency to do or believe things because many other people do or believe the same. In other words, as more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others, lack of independent thinking or real critical thinking ability. If you uncritically accept whatever values, knowledge or ideas you've been taught, many of them perhaps are out of date or having a bias, you are not a great thinker and a highly effective digital leader today, because digital has “VUCA” (Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) reality, the blindly "followship" would lead to poor judgment or cause ineffective decision-making. Being a real critical thinker means you do not follow others’ opinion blindly, but analyze and synthesize all sources of input and information to form your own opinion, be unbiased and objective, take the structural process in making sound judgments and solving problems effectively.

Near-sight effect: Due to pressures from shareholders and unprecedented uncertainty facing businesses today, there is the tendency for business managers to focus on short-term goals or quarterly result because the future seems to be so hard to predict. The challenge for them is how to balance day-to-day operations with the resources for strategic initiatives when they are shared to ensure that the strategic goals for the long-term are still met. Running, growing, and transformation are all important stage for the business’s survival and thriving. Good leaders don't lose the sight of long-term or 'Big picture' even though they spend the certain time, efforts, and resources on achieving the short-term quick wins. They should be able to immediately ascertain which term would benefit the situation as they become aware of each unique objective. The critical point is that short-term goals should be aligned with the "big picture."

The forward-looking view of the organization is to determine what the future needs to look like, what the digitalization must look like; how to expand the lens for capturing the big picture, as well as practice critical thinking to deal with digital complexity and uncertainty, avoid the obstacles and pitfalls on the way, in order to clear the vision, catalyze changes, and accelerate the speed.

Posted in: Digital Master,Famous Business Effect,Lessons from Failures