Digital Transformation: Beyond the Technology

Professor Hein studies the effect of technology on teams collaboration and Innovation she's conducted extensive research on the Dynamics of cross-boundary work teams and particular those spanning National borders so welcome to folks all over the world um Professor Hines Pam also has a body of research on human robot interaction in the work environment and the Dynamics of human robot teams and most recently Pam has been looking at the changing nature of work in the face of emerging Technologies including the nature of coordination and open Innovation and changes in work and organizations resulting from 3D printing and other and the work of data analysts before we begin for our audience please remember you can enter in a question at any time and I do encourage you to submit your questions earlier um during the webinar so don't wait until the last minute go ahead and put them in um and we'll go ahead and take a look at those um as we're going through the webinar with that um let's begin Pam welcome so delighted to have you with us today and um uh let's go ahead and get started um would you discuss what you position think of is what is digital transformation yeah great question um and and it's kind of a complicated question because there are a lot of different definitions that are floating out there and and people think of it in different ways um and it's different in different contexts but I think that generally and this is the way I think of digital transformation is a radical reimagining of how an organization uses technology particularly emerging kinds of Technology to fundamentally change their business models and business performance and that includes rethinking products Services processes and includes emerging Technologies like AI machine learning the expansion of data The Internet of Things robotics social media platforms and so forth so a host of different kinds of emerging Technologies but the key for me in the definition is that it's not about incremental change it's really this radical reimagining of what we are delivering in terms of products and services to our customers and how we are operating you know what our internal processes are for delivering those great thanks you know with that in mind um you do talk a lot about culture why is that important to digital transformation yeah I think it's it's critically important because when there's a lot of evidence at this point that organizations that um successfully achieve digital transformation undergo significant cultural change or they're a new organization that has a culture that aligns with what is required to operate effectively and I'll go into more detail on that um but the bottom line is it can't be done using um existing processes systems and structures from a decade or more ago and part of the reason for that is because it requires continual Innovation um continual meaning that you know it's not just you know a Skunk Works operation that comes up with a new great idea but it's something that an organization needs to attend to on a really constant basis in order to um to stay up on these rapid changes in the technology and in the business environment and that means that there are fundamental changes in the organization that are required um for organization organizations to do this because historically we just haven't had to move that quickly and be that externally focused um you know and one of the things that people ask is well isn't it really about getting good digital Talent you know knowing about these Technologies and being able to use them effectively in these Transformations absolutely that that is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for digital transformation um because you can get overly focused and we see organizations do this all the time get overly focused on the digital piece the technology piece and not on the transformation piece um and you know we're really talking about again this more fundamental radical change um to the way that we do business great thank you for that um you know you talk about the characteristics and culture needed for digital transformation and I'm going to put up a slide that you and I have talked about uh that we wanted to discuss as part of this fireside chat and it's kind of it's the integral component you go into this in your your course in the program can you talk about the characteristics of digital culture this diagram in particular and how it's fundamental for every transformation yep absolutely um so wait the way that this diagram came about is I read broadly about the digital Transformations that were successful and were unsuccessful um over you know a I'd say decade-long period um and there's quite a bit that's written there are a number of really good books um that talk about you know that provide these examples of organizations that have been able to do this successfully and what I did was I distilled these into the five elements that you see here on this diagram um one that's right in the center is being customer Centric um so we'll describe that in a minute but also being Nimble and fast really focusing on voracious learning or a learning based culture unbounded collaboration and appetite for risk so those are the the five that you see in this diagram customer Centric is in the middle of the diagram because all of these capabilities you know Nimble and fast voracious learning and so forth are employed in service of providing customer value oftentimes through these new business models but also new products services and so forth so it needs to be you know the organizations that are most successful really focus first on what can be provided to the customer what needs are out there that are not yet being met that can be met through these Transformations so that's the customer-centric piece Nimble and fast the reason that that's on there is because the pace of change as we are embarking on these digital transformation requires rethinking the direction that we're going and pivoting regularly we need to be in a position to be able to act on new initiatives without you know spending a lot of time um retooling and transitioning so it's a combination of innovation and speed that are required and in order to be nimble and fast oftentimes we need to rethink our organizational structures you know oftentimes our traditional hierarchical structures get in the way of being able to move quickly they're they're designed for reliability not for Speed and the same thing with our internal processes approval processes and so forth um can get in our way of being able to take advantage of these opportunities rapidly the next one is voracious learning um and and basically what this means is having a culture in the organization that's really about learning and curiosity in order to drive new knowledge creation um you need to have people willing to um you know go out and and figure things out not just willing to but passionate about going and learning new things and thinking in new ways as opposed to you know again of a very traditional organization would be focused on hiring people who know what you know have the expertise that you need and then exploiting that expertise in this new environment of the digital transformation we don't necessarily know what it is um that is going to be important the expertise that's going to be required and it's going to be new expertise that is developing um so it's really important that we have a Workforce that is excited about and supported in learning um in terms of unbounded collaboration um what I'm talking about there is being willing to work willing to and incentivized for working across boundaries that are traditional within an organization um so having cross-functional groups working together more actively sometimes it means working outside of the organization where you need to have access to expertise that doesn't exist within um the the organization itself and this is important um two digital transformation because these complex digital offerings often require bringing together very different kinds of expertise different kinds of Technology um and where we may have historically been been able to do that in tandem where you've got one group that works on it and hands over to another group that hands over to another group um and and you know there's this iterative process um that way that's just not fast enough anymore um so what it requires is bringing all the right people into the room at the beginning and working through these ideas and and also that's that's a way to um come up with really new and novel ideas if people are really building on the knowledge and expertise of others um and then finally we have appetite for risk and what I mean by that is an organization that has a culture as well as processive processes incentive systems structures and so forth that encourage and support risk taking why is that important well it's because people won't take risks they won't innovate they won't try new things if they are afraid that they are going to um you know be punished in some way or embarrassed in some way within the organization you know they're going to take a route that is safer for them um so it's really important that people feel like that it's actually a good thing to try new things even if they fail what's important though about this is that it doesn't mean that everybody can just make mistakes in their work Amy Edmondson who's a professor at Harvard talks about preventable failures these are things where we we know how to do it right and we just got sloppy that's not the kind of risk that I'm talking about um I'm talking about what she calls intelligent intelligent failures at the frontier and these are failures that provide new knowledge to the individuals and organization um and are good for the organization they're actually learning opportunities for the organization and particularly in cases when we we actually don't know the answer in advance we don't know whether or not um you know this new solution is is going to work we don't know whether or not there's really going to be a market for it so how can we experiment fail quickly um and and move on so I know I spoke a lot here Anita uh but in you know kind of in summary um to your question you know I think that digital transformation is as much about the transformation as the digital and the transformation piece requires really rethinking organization culture structures and systems um you know in the way that people think about their work and work together excellent thanks Pam um and thanks for for going deep in some of these topics so uh really appreciate you expanding on some of these ideas um next question and um uh this is more of a you know say somebody is is not a digital transformation leader they're they're not leading an initiative or they're a member but they're not necessarily the leader or they'd like to learn to get involved or make change in their organization so why is it important to learn about digital transformation even if you're not going to be the leader but you will be a participant yeah now that's a great question um and you know my answer is that nobody's immune even if you're not leading digital transformation today you're likely to be impacted by it um and if not today sometime soon according to the world economic for Forum no industry is going to be able to avoid digital transformation so you know if you're thinking that well I'm in an industry that it's not going to affect yeah ultimately it probably will or if you're in a role that you don't think um will be affected or you'll be called on to respond to digital transformation that you know it's possible but there's a really high likelihood that it will affect every role throughout the organization and and one of the reasons is if you go back to you know what I was talking about before in terms of the cultural chains cultural change that's just not just in one part of the organization the cultural change has to span the entire organization um so it's it's useful to learn I think about digital transformation so that you understand why the organization is shifting in the way that it is and and actually being able to support and help the organization in doing that even if you're not right now on the front line of some kind of you know digital transformation in terms of a particular product or service um you know as I mentioned even industries that are typically thought about as being low-tech um will be and are experiencing radical changes so it's important to be ready I actually over the last few months have been spending time at dairy farms and dairy Farm's one of the the new technologies that's coming in is new robotic milking machines and they're just amazing um you know they they're the cows actually choose when they want to be milked um and they go into this system and the system is complete with sensors there's a dashboard that the dairy men or women can use to monitor the health the milk production and so forth of their cows it'll flag whether or not there is a cow that they should go check on and they can do that from anywhere you know on an on an iPad these days um so you know even agriculture which we think of as being pretty low-tech there are amazing things that are happening and happening rapidly and really transforming what it means to work in those Industries um the other thing I would say is that because successful digital transformation requires this significant overhaul of most organizational cultures um you know as I said earlier most employees are going to be affected at least to some extent and if you understand those requirements you can actually position yourself on the front end of those changes and help your organization instead of being surprised and potentially lagging behind um and and one of the things I'll say to Anita is in our digital transformation program uh what we've done is identified four courses that we think are really important for Learners to start with um that provide you know I think a nice coverage of the types of changes that are needed in organizations for transformation ways to think about the different kinds of technological advances that might make sense for particular organizations or contexts or applications and importantly how to effectively lead these efforts so those courses are they all start with this x d g t I'm going to ignore that first one is number 100 and that is foundation's digital transformation and that goes into more detail on what I was talking about earlier in terms of those five different aspects of uh the the foundational culture that an organization needs uh the next one I'll mention is 224 which is building an AI enabled organization and this is a really I think fun course because it looks across a broad swath of Industries at the different ways that AI can actually enable um new products and services so that's I I find that course to be really kind of inspirational um the other one is 223 which is building a product platform strategy to accelerate growth so in this course we really look at products and kind of the traditional product strategy and platforms and how you bring those together in a way that is really aligned with what you're trying to accomplish and what the strategy is for the organization and Professor Eisner teaches that brings in lots of nice case studies and so forth and then the the last one I'll mention is the in the fourth one on the list is uh 111. um and this course is systems leadership managing uncertainty in the digital age um and this very much focuses on how to be a more effective leader when things are uh more complex and more uncertain um so that's one that that everybody can benefit particularly in this day and age thank you and and thanks for talking about the the core courses that's something new that we've added to the program to uh give uh our Learners our customers um a Learning Journey that would uh be appropriate for them depending upon where they are in their career um whether they're focused more on a managerial path or technical uh technical track um so that thank you for expanding on that um why we picked those four courses and then I also do want to mention that um on your screens for those of you who are with us today you can also see another opportunity this is one of our first opportunities to invite uh Learners customers to come to the Stanford campus in late January we're hosting a course on campus where you can learn from digital transformation our faculty members that teach in this program and you can learn more by clicking on there's is a link there for the program which is called Innovation strategy in a digital world and our customer service can answer any additional questions you might have we have about five minutes left and so I would love it if you would answer a question from one of our guests here today this is um how do you overcome organizational resistance to transformation and we we know this one comes up a lot um especially when uh the folks in charge um uh might not be aligned um to support that change um and uh you know you talk about risk and not only this from the the the the people that are actually going to make the change implement the changes whether it's managerial process technology but the executives that have to be comfortable with that risk can you talk a little bit about that yeah I mean that that's hard um because for the type of um change that I'm talking about um it really requires high level leadership if you're going to change your organizational structures if you're going to change your organizational culture if you're going to encourage and not punish risk and that really does trickle down from the top of the organization in the absence of that somebody who is sort of leading from the middle if you will uh one of the things that has worked really well um is what we call small wins and that is doing something look more locally to prove out the importance of doing this um so that you know because because oftentimes the reason that people are resistant is because um they are concerned about the risk they're not convinced that it really is important or is going to be successful or the organization can do it effectively so to be able to prove that out in small ways with the resources that you have available is a good way to get people's attention and then you can um you know publicize those small wins and hopefully over time um although hopefully quickly too because things are moving quickly get more um support from leadership in the organization and the other thing too is to to look for leaders that are supportive you know even if there is some resistance there are probably other leaders in the organization that get it um so you know uh working with them as as allies as um you know a team that can kind of develop and um Champion um these these small wins and these changes um I I'm going to try and squeeze in one more question um and um what do you foresee as a future of digital transformation oh yeah um so that's the million dollar question um and I wish I had a crystal ball um to predict but you know in terms of the the details of it it's hard because because these are Innovations and we don't know right by the nature of um what we're talking about in terms of transformation we don't know but what I can say with confidence is that um we we can pretty much guarantee that there will be continued disruptions um to organizations and to Industries driven by these advances in Technologies and these Innovative new business models products services and so forth that capitalize on those Technologies and those advances and that includes everything that we're seeing out there AI machine learning sensors digital traceability virtual and augmented reality smart materials Robotics and so on and so forth and and perhaps most importantly the integration of these Technologies um for new products services and processes within the organization so I guess the two things just to summarize that I would predict is we're going to see continued disruptions and we're going to see more and more integration of these Technologies in order to affect the kind of transformation that we're going to be seeing great thank you um let's see here I'm trying to see if I can squeeze in one more question one more minute if you if you had to do uh um one last thing good few words of why digital transformation in one minute why digital transformation oh um why why is it happening uh why why the program oh um yeah I guess it would go back to what I was saying earlier which is this is an inevitability um for for all of us right and it's not you know even in in education we're experiencing this you know it's it is it is pervasive and you know I I it is always better to be in the know and be able to anticipate some of these things so that so that we can get ahead of them and and have an impact and make a contribution and potentially even you know choose different career paths um depending upon where we think we can um can contribute fantastic thank you Pam thank you for that last impromptu question to you um I want to thank everybody who joined us today and um your participation the there will be a recording of This that um will be shared with you within a few days and um thank you again Pam and thank you all for joining us for this first of a kind uh fireside chat for the Stanford digital transformation program and I wish you all a wonderful day um and journey through your career thanks thank you thank you Anita and thank you everyone

2022-12-20 00:08

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