Is there any business catchphrase more ubiquitous nowadays than "digital transformation"? Everyone craves the agility, innovation, relevance, engagement, reputation, loyalty, and brand advocacy that digital transformation promises. But how many are willing to do what it takes to achieve the sort of digital transformation that matters? If your organization wants a meaningful digital transformation, then it must be willing to do enough to make it worthwhile; otherwise, you are just putting band-aids on a gaping wound.
What does "doing enough" mean? That depends on many factors, such as your category, legacy systems, culture, the frequency of acquisitions, disparate systems, centralization, global footprint, and other attributes, but the most important factors are your openness to risk and your willingness to invest what it takes. In short: No pain, no gain.
Today, many traditional organizations cast a desiring eye upon their upstart competition having "benefits" such as agility, private equity, and newer technology unburdened by legacy systems. (Few, however, would take the corresponding drawbacks of cashflow urgency, bootstrap mentality, and--ironically enough--the lack of legacy reputation, customer base, and institutional knowledge.) The difference is that startups are permitted (in fact, encouraged ) to take business risks, invest heavily in building the right tech stack, and take losses against future gains. Meanwhile, traditional public companies are beholden to Wall Street expectations for consistent quarterly results.
This is why the key to digital transformation isn't going to be found in your IT department but in the C-suite. What risks are you willing to take? Can you put a portion of today's business model at risk to create tomorrow's? How much are you willing to invest? Can you tell your shareholders that transforming your company for success tomorrow will involve increased costs today?
I regularly speak with business leaders who tell me they want to emulate Amazon, but Amazon lost almost $3 billion before turning its first profit. And well after Amazon established itself, it continued to prioritize innovation and market share over margin. And Amazon took risks—significant risks. It launched Amazon Prime and AWS and won; and it lost on the Amazon Fire Phone, which Amazon pulled little more than a year after it debuted. Of course, few want to emulate Amazon's losses, its purposeful reduced margin, its considerable R&D costs, and its risks. They want to be Amazon without doing Amazon.
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