Will Your Business Be Transformed Or Disrupted?

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If Covid-19 hasn’t forced you — prepared or not — into a digital transformation this year, know that it may be only a matter of time.

In his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan redefined the word “technology” not as the tools of humans but rather as the relationship humans have with their tools.

If technology is an extension of human abilities, what, then, is digital transformation? In Harvard Business Review, Becky Frankiewicz and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argue that digital transformation is an extension of a business’s human capabilities, and it can be an elegant extension or a clunky extension depending on how much thought the team puts into readiness. I believe they’re right. When we fail to acknowledge that even the most complex technologies are merely the extension of human abilities, we set ourselves up for failure, whether we’re transforming our processes, our business models, our domains or our organizations/cultures.

But I’d like to take this line of thinking a step further. In my experience, digital transformation is an extension not just of our human capabilities, but also of our human values.

When we ensure that our processes for recruitment, leadership and growth are rooted in the company’s values, we can put ourselves on the path to transformation rather than the path to disruption. Values like openness to learning (and even to being challenged) drive strategy, which drives behavior — all of which are implicated in readiness for change.

When given the choice between knowledge, skills and abilities, hire for abilities — and shape abilities around corporate values.

Recruiters and HR managers often look for the right balance between three broad areas: They want candidates who have a theoretical understanding of their subject matter, experience applying that knowledge and character traits that can be leveraged across a broad range of tasks. If an executive or recruiter finds a candidate who is strong in all these areas, they’ve hit the jackpot. More likely, candidates will be strong in one or two of the three areas and weak in others.

To set your business up for success in digital transformation, hire for abilities like flexibility, teachability, critical thinking and perseverance — then look for a healthy dose of humility. When you hire people who value openness and humility, you can ensure that they are willing to learn. In a period of rapid change, knowledge and skills quickly become outdated without constant upkeep. A willingness to learn and change is timeless in this rapidly changing world.

The push for change must come from the C-suite, not from IT.

As someone who helps organizations innovate and integrate new business models and emerging technologies, I avoid working with companies that don’t have their executives on board. In fact, if I can’t identify someone within the C-suite who is a clear champion of the digital transformation initiative, I have reservations about getting started.

After all, top leaders are as susceptible to feeling threatened by change as other employees. For this reason, businesses should discourage leaders from letting pride get in the way of sound decision making if they want to promote excellence in digital transformation. The test-and-learn Agile approach has the openness to failure baked into it. In my experience, those threatened by failure won’t test. Those who won’t test don’t learn — and those who don’t learn won’t change. On the flip side, humble leaders understand that their instincts aren’t foolproof. They use their expertise and experience not as an excuse to avoid more analytical decision making, but as tools to understand what the data is saying in each context.

Having a data-driven culture means checking your ego at the door.

In order to cultivate leaders who are better positioned for change, empower people to value the insights that data has to offer. This isn’t to say that only employees who specialize in data analysis should progress into more senior positions; companies should have a diverse set of employee abilities at all levels. But understanding the company’s key metrics (and how these metrics fit into the overall strategy) should be a requisite for moving beyond entry-level roles.

The leaders of startups, in particular, need to ask several important questions, especially when they’re in a period of rapid growth: Given where I want my company to be in a certain number of years, what information would I like to have at my fingertips at each milestone? What is the most straightforward way to collect this information? Have we allocated part of our budget toward data analysis in each area of the business? Most importantly, who will “own” that information? Do we have people with analytical abilities and quantitative skills in each area of our business — from sales to HR to the executive team — or are these skills concentrated under the banner of IT?

As we saw in the Coming of Age Digitally report by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, bringing in leaders to push for “digital maturity” isn’t enough. I believe we need to grow data-driven leaders from the inside, and that involves giving employees a window into the company’s vision, empowering people to think differently and preventing employees from becoming siloed in their respective departments. All of this is common knowledge among most leaders going through digital transformation. What I think they need to understand further is that without corporate humility and openness, ego can set up roadblocks between valuing data insights and acting on them.

After all, if we give our employees a window into the company’s vision and empower them to think outside the box, there’s a good chance that the status quo will be challenged from the inside — which, again, is humbling. I think it's also necessary for survival. Remember that transformation is a strategic challenge from the inside. Disruption is a challenge from the outside. Leaders who want to cope with various environments need to decide which challenge they prefer. Will you be an agent for change or a victim of disruption? The future of your business may depend on it, and it might require you to overhaul your values in addition to your technology.

This article was originally published on Forbes.