Digital transformation: How to keep the momentum going

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to accelerate digital transformation to stay functional in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis. As the global workforce shifted to a remote work model, a change that would typically take years happened practically overnight.

This kickstart offers a great opportunity for leaders to push the digital agenda forward. However, the pandemic has also taken a steep toll on the workforce, so it will take stamina to keep up the momentum as we navigate the complexities of the new normal.

The first months of a crisis can offer an opportunity to learn more about your organization’s transformation needs. Leaders should be asking themselves: How was our organization able to cope? What broke, and why? What worked out better than expected, and what was the backbone holding us together?

Answers to these questions will help to guide the digital agenda for your organization, but this is only the starting point. Once you know where you should be headed, the hard part is motivating people to change so you can get there. The success of digital transformation depends not on technology, but systemic and behavioral changes.

Here are three crucial steps in motivating people to drive digital transformation forward:

Respecting no political or geographical boundaries, COVID-19 has illuminated the depth and scale of global interdependencies. While countries are independently handling their own responses to the crisis, the effectiveness of these different strategies depends on the actions of others.

Ideally, this pandemic will open our eyes to the closeness of other global crises, climate change being perhaps most urgent. It may have also compelled many of us to question our purpose: What am I trying to achieve with my work, and why is it important?

If your organization hasn’t already done so, now is the time to clarify the “why” behind the digital transformation, and the answer should be more than just potential efficiency gains or keeping up with competitors.

During the shock phase, many companies have focused on tackling the most immediate challenges and postponed certain development projects deemed less important, but in the longer term, the future exists only for the companies that push for renewal.

Courageous leaders will look beyond what’s right in front of them to direct their digital agenda toward creating a more collaborative global society in which everyone – business and political leaders alike – takes responsibility for building a more sustainable future. Explicitly identifying and tackling climate change, for example, as the key objective for digital transformation will help people to find meaning in change.

Be warned, however: Greenwashing your transformation agenda will backfire as employees and customers alike will see your bluff. A mismatch between words and actions crushes morale, so identify a cause to which your organization can and will commit.

Starting with “why” gets people excited and engaged, but making progress visible keeps them going.

As a leader in many digital transformation projects, I’ve witnessed first-hand how these projects tend to follow a curve: There’s a positive peak, after which things start to regress unless the team works really hard.

This regression is especially common when digital transformation is understood as a project with a specific start and end date rather than a continuous learning journey. That’s why you must ensure that everyone sees that transformation is never a one-off event, as well as use metrics that make progress visible every day.