The Tide, Wave, and Ripple Effect of an evolving digital organization

The digital ecosystem provides unprecedented opportunities to strike a dynamic balance between the inner and outer elements, and leapfrog the business world up to the next level of advancement.

Change is the new normal. The speed of change is increasing, to put simply, change itself changes. Change Management also turns out to be more complex. Digitalization is all about the exponential growth of information, rapid speed of changes, hyperconnectivity and interdependence. The emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern as the pervasiveness of an organization's digitization journey increases. The digital ecosystem has also become more complex and dynamic. Therefore, today’s digital leaders need to understand the tide, wave, and the ripple effect of an evolving digital organization in order to manage changes seamlessly.

The ripple effect of changes: Ripples are small water movements produced by winds which transfer energy to the water as they blow over. Ripples expand across the water when an object is dropped into it. Ripple effect is often used colloquially to mean a multiplier. Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly. Change is fragile and often temporary - it usually occurs at the behavior level. To continuously change and innovate within organizations, individuals and groups need to connect and communicate more openly, easily and effectively. It’s important to understand the psychology behind changes and make a shift at the mindset level in order to have a ripple effect for changes. It’s important to make the cross-pollination of ideas and a close connection to the market for all parts of the organization. You can’t just command changes from the top, you have to build change platforms for supporting all valuable change initiatives and efforts, working with the people at all levels of the organization and having them motivated and inspired for changes.

The next wave of changes: These ripples can subsequently grow in size, length, and speed to form what we know as waves. Waves are usually influenced by a range of factors such as wind speed, duration, and distance. They are also influenced by the width of the surrounding areas and the depth of the water body itself. Same as the change management in today’s digital business for adapting to the digital dynamic. Organizations today need to constantly improve the business and seeing change as an opportunity while keeping a holistic overview of the business are the core messages. Organizations arise when the scale of the interrelations, interactions, or inter-relational interactions surpasses the individual’s capacity to be able to do whatever it does with smaller scales. Riding change waves takes both courage and strategy, skills and practices. Change is a volatile subject, just like change itself. It takes a lot of effort and resources to make change happen. Change leaders need to understand the relation and dynamics between consciousness (thinking), energy (emotions), and information deeply in order to ride the upcoming change waves effortlessly.

The tide of digitalization: The rise and fall of water, or rather the difference between the crests and troughs are defined as tides. Tides occur in deep oceanic regions and they are often characterized by movements of water over extended periods of time. Tides are formed as a result of nature force and the gravitational attraction between the Earth, Moon, and Sun. It’s the “product” of the natural ecosystem. Digitalization is like the ocean tide, it evolves the entire business ecosystem. Digital Transformation is the change, but on a grand level, at the level of the system, differentiate in terms of the end result on a systemic level. However, the biggest challenge with any large-scale transformation program is – do the senior leaders truly understand the time and impact on the organization and do they have the intestinal fortitude to hold up to corrections? For many, the ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. To effectively respond to these new dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams while becoming more responsive and innovative. Align the different parts of the ecosystem to adopt more points of integration and incorporate the use of "stacks." Dynamic resources, long-term perspective, scalable performance and harmonized relationship are all critical to ride the tide of digitalization.

Just like the natural ecosystem has created so many impressive phenomena such as ocean waves and tides, as well as provided the impetus to her evolutionary agenda. The digital ecosystem also provides unprecedented opportunities to strike a dynamic balance between the inner and outer elements, and leapfrog the business world up to the next level of advancement and maturity.

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