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newDATA

MAGAZINE

A wasted crisis for

REAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Stanford economist Paul Romer once said
that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. All
over the world, organisations are totally
wasting the current health crisis when it comes
to rethinking work practices, teamwork,

collaboration and leadership.
For the last few years, digital transformation

had been one of the darling buzzwords of the
business world. To boost their business
results, organisations have been investing
tons of resources to recreate their processes
through the use of digital technologies.

Such is their commitment, that many
organisations create new teams and appoint communication; knowledge creation, access
dedicated Digital Transformation Leads to and retention. It equally depends on how able,

push forward those efforts. At the end of the ready and willing the whole organisation is to
day, this is a priority. And we know it is a priority, understand and embrace the digitised world it
if nothing else, because of the number of wants to enter.
conferences, webinars, books and white
papers about digital transformation which Digital transformation is totally anchored on
were being offered on a daily basis up until a shift in mindsets. Despite what they say,

COVID-19 struck. organisations have been extremely slow and
resistant to actually make that shift.
It is surprising though, how the majority
of organisations invest in digital When the COVID-19 pandemic so suddenly
transformation by solely focusing on impacted organisations all over the world,
things that seemed impossible became
digitising their outward-facing processes. mandatory. Like working from home or not

As if one could sustain a pretty, agile and making work dependent on face-to-face
efficient exterior without a matching meetings.

investment in the internal scaffolding: Across the globe, leaders and employees
people, processes and platforms. were forced to use enterprise social platforms

D i g i t a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n r e l i e s o n to communicate, collaborate and share
organisations being agile. And agility depends knowledge. These are the same platforms
on employees' competencies; teams' many of them have been resisting - or at least

c o l l a b o r a t i o n p r a c t i c e s ; c ro s s - s i l o ignoring – for so long.

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