Digitization - first things first

Just a thought and a personal opinion about companies facing digital change:

Digital transformation seems to be a hot candidate for the buzzword of the last years. And its definitely one of the most important topics for many companies to get their business prepared for the challenges of the upcoming years.

Digital transformation normally means questioning and sometimes even reorganizing every part of your current business, from strategie to HR, from your products to your marketing, from your processes to your philosophy.

When following, how some companies are facing the challenges of digital change in reality, one could sometimes ask, if they unterstood about which things really matter and which are just freestyle.

What do I mean with that?

Companies are building fancy new offices with brickwalls, cool bulb lights hanging from the ceiling and free food for everyone. They are introducing modern working principles like agile development, design thinking, everyone is free to choose a desk in the morning and there are frequently some cool events like hackatons and after work events in the office. Company leaders disestablish formal and oldschool communication principles. And of course they set up Start Up incubators where they develop the products of the future.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with that and some things might be necessary for future work and the war for talents.

But:

At the same time, when companies try to build the future, some people are not even able to fulfil basic principles of working today, like

- answer your E-Mails (in time)

- be responsible for the things you do and stand up for it

- be curious to do something different and don’t just do things, like you always did it

- be ready to fail 

- think out of your little box, try to be responsible for the product not just the part that is described in your contract

- be open to new ideas, even when they come from others

- say what you mean

- be in time

- be prepared when you go to a meeting

- …

These principles have nothing to do with digital transformation, of course. But as long as these basics of how to work together are not clear, everything else is just window-dressing. It just doesn’t get you any further.

It’s like a 3-year-old demanding for a Formula1 car to be faster. Instead learning how to ride a bike without support wheels would be more effective in the first place. When he can manage that there is plenty of time to move further. Or like living in a very old house, that must be modernized, just giving it a new painting, instead renovating the cellar, the heating and putting in new windows would be the most important step.

It’s just first things first (do your job correctly), not the coolest things first (brick wall offices).

Let me know what you think. Am I only seeing a small part of the companies and reality is totally different? Maybe I just don’t see what’s happening inside the companies? What are your experiences?