What Sand Castles Can Teach Us About Digital Transformation
Roger Mitchell
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Why are sand castles and digital transformation in the same newsletter?
Aside from being on a beach holiday this week, there are three points that folks often miss in their initiatives.
- Enjoy the process
- Work with what you know how to use
- Embrace the impermanence of what you deliver
Let’s explore each of these and why it matters.
Enjoy the process
Digital transformation programs are often considered a panacea for organizations that have been operating for decades or experiencing rapid growth.
Regardless of where you are in the digital transformation hierarchy, you should be enjoying the process of designing and delivering your initiative, even with the occasional wave that crashes into your progress and causes you to rebuild.
By bringing a positive mindset, you increase the likelihood of adoption and decrease potential pushback from stakeholders as you go through change management.
Work with tools you know you can use
Embedded within digital transformation programs is often an over reliance on systems to be the solution, which present their own set of challenges as your internal team develops expertise and you engage an implementation firm.
This is further complicated by access to systems that might be affordable based on your organization’s budget, but take considerable effort to implement and maintain.
Don’t overdo it by getting professional sand sculpting tools, fancy shovels, and checking the water content of your mixture. Your hands alone can produce incredible things.
Just because you‘re (aspiring to be) enterprise sized doesn’t mean you need to have enterprise grade processes and systems across the board.
Embrace the impermanence of what you deliver
Even though initiatives are important and might even be existential to your organization, the strategy, processes, and systems are not permanent.
Yet, many stakeholders assume their solutions must last for durations that are unreasonably long, withstand edge cases that are low probability or low impact, or conflate success of an initiative and their professional trajectory.
What you build will be tested by forces outside of your control, whether it be the cyclical tides, winds slowly eroding grain by grain, or a toddler pretending to be Godzilla.
You can choose to reinforce, rebuild, or recognize it’s time for something new altogether. But don’t assume from the outset that you’re immune from these forces.
TLDR: Treat your digital transformation initiatives like sand castles. Enjoy delivering your initiatives, realize the benefits without overdoing it, and recognize that it will fade in due time.