How To Nail A Digital Culture

How To Nail A Digital Culture

2016 is the year of the digital re-org. It’s easy to see the logic. If digital changes the way you treat your customers, then it must change the organisation that supports them.

Martin Gill, a friend and colleague, lays out the evidence in his latest Forrester report on Digital Staffing: digital teams have plateaued at an average 94 people as lines of business take on more digital responsibility.

Enter Organisational Design. A tempting, but misplaced response. Tempting because when you move boxes on an org chart, you clearly commit to digital change. Misguided because it misses a step. To guarantee the success of any new organisation, you first have to change your company’s culture.

Culture. That jiggly word.

Many leaders don’t invest in culture change. Not because they fail to see the point. But because they struggle to nail a scope and connect efforts to returns.

But it’s possible to change culture using a disciplined approach.

Over the past few months, I’ve collected best practices from digital leaders who have formal culture-change programs. I’ve also drawn from my personal experience leading a 70-person team – plus stakeholders across the wider business – through a product relaunch.

Culture-change programs have four common attributes. They are:

  1. Immersive. People don’t change because they know digital is right. They change because they feel that it’s right. That’s why the Head of Digital at a healthcare company immersed his senior executives in a “Life Of The Customer” workshop – complete with reams of direct mail and calls to customer service that frustrate policy-holders.

    A word of caution: I’ve seen innovation labs, often sponsored by agencies, that use the latest digital bells and whistles to help executives “find the feeling”. Resist this approach unless you can connect the field trip to your customers’ needs. Otherwise, you won’t direct the emotional momentum towards solving your biggest problems.
  2. Interdisciplinary. Digital breakthroughs come from lateral thinking. One media company uses small, interdisciplinary teams to tackle threats created by the shift from print to online. Each team has its own charter, prescriptions on how to work together, and a hypothesis to test. The best ideas from this process earn funding.

    Techniques like 6 Thinking Hats are practical ways to stimulate lateral thinking and organise interdisciplinary team sessions. 
  3. Structured. One digital leader told me, “To bring along the broader organisation, we need workshops and diagnostics. Things can’t be too grey.” Use diagnostics like Forrester’s Digital Maturity Model to track progress.

    And while most digital leaders do not (yet) involve HR in program design, I’ve personally found that Learning & Development teams are a gifted resource for designing interventions and scripting critical moves.
  4. Reinforced. Successful programs use regular, simple reinforcements in addition to planned events. My own favourites are meeting starters – 2-5 minute exercises designed to test for team alignment or encourage curiosity when considering a new idea.

    Physical reminders work too. Raj Rao, 3M’s VP of eTransformation, once gave me a set of drink coasters with colourful infographics about 3M’s digital change.

What’s the lesson here? Don’t put off the work to create a digital culture because it feels too squishy.

Bonus: Here are my favourite tools to inject discipline into your efforts. I’ve used these with my own teams, except for 6 Thinking Hats. That’s a new goody I’m adding to my bag.

  • Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard - Rider. Elephant. Path. The most memorable and effective framework for managing change.
  • Winning Teams, Winning Cultures - Helpful tools to keep you and your teams curious. Assume positive intent = Best line of the book. 
  • IDEO U: Design Thinking Online Courses - $399 a course. Learn how to think like a designer through videos, assignments, and community. Format itself is a masterclass in online learning. 
  • Forrester Digital Maturity Model - Subscription required. I like it best because it measures Culture as well as Strategy and Technology. (Full disclosure: I edited and funded earlier versions of this model when I was a Research Director at Forrester.)
  • Co-Creation: Designing With The User, For The User - This isn’t technically about culture. It’s a structured way to bring customers into product development. Anytime you involve the customer, you’re helping your teams feel the change.
  • 6 Thinking Hats - Method to encourage full exploration of benefits, cautions, facts, feelings, process, and creativity.

 

 

 

Mohammed Abdul Jawad

Market Researcher at Pharmaceutical Solutions Industry

7y

First culture change, then digital transformation! The former makes an environment rewarding, and the latter more exciting with connectivity. :)

Josh Walker

Co-Founder and CEO at Sports Innovation Lab

7y

Smart. Especially like the advice around avoiding field trips and innovation labs that don't matter to your business. Most 3D printers don't create exciting customer experience opportunities. Hope you keep writing, but next time use proper English spelling. You know...the American kind 😉

Debbie Curtis-Magley - CDMP

Storytelling Strategist Building Business Through Social Media

7y

Great round up of best practices. Loved the 6 Thinking Hats concept -- clever approach to collaboration.

Victoria Bough

Partner at McKinsey & Company

7y

Gorgeous! Culture wins every time.

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Matt (MJ) Joanou

CEO & Co-founder at Stakeholder Labs 📈🔬

7y

Enjoyed your article! The point on #3 around involving L&D is important, they are often an overlooked asset. Does this approach change at all when the Digital team is distributed?

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