（本文经PMI授权转载，侵权必究－如需转载，请后台联系）
危机后的数字化转型：以人为本
编辑推荐理由
近年，数字化转型是热点，人们常常容易首先关注到的是数字化技术，但本文从另一个视角告诉我们：“数字化转型与技术无关。” “大多数数字技术为提高效率和客户亲密度提供了可能性。”技术只是工具方法，最终目的是为了在社会疏远的时代，打破传统障碍并消除建立直接联系的不必要的组织障碍，从而深刻理解客户和大趋势。本文对数字化转型本质分析的很深刻透彻，强烈推荐！
危机的性质、规模和范围各不相同，但无论组织、行业或地域如何，某些方面都是真实的。
在2020年Covid-19大流行期间，某些技术已经成熟。数百万人第一次被迫在家工作。由于无法面对面地见面，世界各地的家庭不得不快速掌握Skype、Zoom、Microsoft Teams和许多其他连接技术。Zoom的每日用户从之前的最高1000万激增至2020年3月的2亿多。“Zoombombing”成为一种现象。
对于组织而言，存在紧迫问题。对许多人来说，生存是首要任务。几乎所有其他组织都被迫重新思考他们的业务和运营模式——其目的、战略、员工、流程、客户以及作为其基础的技术。无论这些问题的答案是什么，技术成为转型的主要推动力，快速学习和适应这种“新常态”的能力对于生存至关重要。
“Covid-19使每个组织都意识到其在瞬息万变的环境中快速学习的能力是有限的，在这种环境中，十天的犹豫可能导致感染人数翻两番，并导致业务和社会混乱升级，”波士顿咨询集团的 Rich Lesser和Martin Reeves说。“弹性不再是一个理论上的问题：公司和国家已经痛苦地意识到它们所依赖的关键系统的脆弱性。危机使公司和政府需要证明他们的目的和价值观不仅仅是在更好的时代写下的空话。”
2018年之前的Brightline研究更广泛地着眼于如何最好地处理和应对危机。我们调查了来自政府、非营利组织和私营部门的1,200多位全球高级领导人和高管，了解危机事件期间和之后的管理决策和组织实力。毕竟，危机经历是常见的：68%的受访者同意他们的组织在未来不可避免地面临危机——尽管很少有人能预料到像Covid-19这样的全球性和戏剧性的事情。一次暴露数百万客户数据的黑客攻击。一项重大的假日产品发布推到明年。董事长因不当行为被立即解雇。一名员工的失误在网上疯传。一个组织的下一次重大危机的情况各不相同，但它的出现是不可避免的。虽然危机在性质、规模和范围上有所不同，但无论组织、行业或地域如何，以下三个方面都是真实的。
首先，从危机中学习需要进入危机模式。
面临危机时，组织必须刻意打破传统的工作方式。像往常一样运作可以防止组织孤立其在危机中的学习并将其应用于危机后的改进。
其次，在危机后变得更强大的组织在两个关键领域进行危机模式转变：人员和流程。
在内部流程中具有更高灵活性的组织，以及那些赋予更接近危机的非领导层员工做出决策的组织，在危机后往往比那些没有这样做的组织更强大。
最后，危机模式迫使组织检查四个关键领域，无论它们是在危机后还是照常营业：
战略计划的优先级、决策制定和流程执行的速度、团队授权以及致力于内部沟通。信息必须流动，沟通需要透明和一致。
然而，组织在危机之后找到积极成果的情况不可避免。当然，没有领导者会希望发生危机，但这并不意味着灾难。相反：某些机会可能会从危机中出现并对企业产生持久的积极影响。危机可以激发员工的最佳潜能，发掘流程的改进，并揭示新的商机，所有这些都可以而且应该影响危机后的战略和前进的方向。
那么，组织如何确保在Covid-19大流行之后变得更强大？当然，没有简单的答案。但是，有一个直截了当的挑战：如何最好地利用技术来最大限度地利用技术和人。人们利用技术。
迫切需要加速数字化转型。MuleSoft的Connectivity Benchmark调查发现，97%的IT决策者都参与了各自组织的数字化转型计划。一项针对董事、CEO和高级管理人员的调查发现，数字化转型风险是2019年企业最关心的问题。那是在大流行之前。现在，我们预计组织中的大多数决策者目前都以一种或另一种方式参与数字化转型——无论是更新他们的系统还是完全重新配置他们的技术以支持战略方向的支点。
然而，如果数字化转型是领导者议程的首要任务，我们需要很快吸取一些基本的教训。大量研究表明，组织在将数字化转型从想法转变为现实的过程中一再挣扎。令人惊讶的是，所有数字化转型计划中有70%未能实现其目标。在一年内用于数字化转型的1.3万亿美元中，估计有9000亿美元被浪费了。
Mike Sutcliff、Raghav和Aarohi Sen确定了数字化转型冲击企业缓冲的两个主要原因：高层管理人员对目标的不言而喻的分歧；以及支持试点的数字能力与支持扩展的能力之间的鸿沟。
关键的认识必须是数字化转型——现在比以往任何时候都更需要组织和领导者以人为本。Behnam Tabrizi、Ed Lam、Kirk Girard和Vernon Irvin在研究为什么一些数字化转型努力成功而其他努力失败的工作中简单地得出结论：“数字化转型与技术无关。” “大多数数字技术为提高效率和客户亲密度提供了可能性。但是，如果人们缺乏正确的变革心态，而当前的组织实践存在缺陷，那么数字化转型只会放大这些缺陷，”他们说，并继续建议领导者重新联系基本面，专注于“改变员工的心态”。[一个组织的] 成员以及组织文化和流程，然后再决定使用什么数字工具以及如何使用它们。成员对组织未来的设想推动了技术的发展，而不是相反”。
数字化转型之路必须由内而外，必须是员工转型。Brightline开发的框架——Brightline转型指南针——的核心是认识到成功的转型是建立一种由内而外和由外而内的方法保持一致的运动。这种转变由组织内部忠诚的高级领导领导，并由您自己的大量员工（与您的成功息息相关的管理层和一线团队成员）共同推动和推动。它不是由顾问大军创建和执行的千篇一律的练习。这种方法之所以有效，是因为专注于个人转变；通过使员工能够制定自己的转型之旅来建立员工的承诺和动力。
这种方法并不是孤立的——它依赖于对客户的深刻同情，以及对影响他们行为的大趋势的理解。在社会疏远的时代，它涉及打破传统障碍并消除建立直接联系的不必要的组织障碍——这就是技术的用武之地。
英文原文
Digital transformation in the wake of a crisis: focus on people.Crises differ in character, scale, and scope, but some aspects are true no matter the organisation, industry, or geography.
Some technologies came of age during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of people were forced into homeworking for the first time. Unable to see each other face to face, families worldwide had to quickly master Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and a host of other connecting technologies. Zoom’s daily users mushroomed to more than 200 million in March 2020 from a previous maximum total of 10 million. “Zoombombing” became a phenomenon.
For organisations there were immediate pressing concerns. For many, survival was mission number one. And virtually all other organisations have been forced to rethink their business and operating model – its purpose, its strategy, its employees, its processes, its customers, and the technology which underlies it. Whatever the answers to these questions, technology became a major enabler to transform, and the ability to quickly learn and adapt to this “new normal” is essential to survive.
“Covid-19 has made every organisation aware of the limits of its ability to learn quickly in an extremely fast-moving environment, in which ten days of hesitation can lead to the quadrupling of infections and to an escalation of business and societal disruption,” say Rich Lesser and Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group. “Resilience is no longer a theoretical concern: companies and countries have been made painfully aware of the fragility of the critical systems upon which they depend. And crisis has created a need for companies and governments to demonstrate that their purpose and values are not just hollow words written in better times.”
Previous Brightline research in 2018 looked more generally at how best to deal with and respond to crises. We surveyed more than 1,200 senior global leaders and executives from the government, non-profit, and private sectors about management decisions and organisational strengths during and after crisis events. After all, the experience of crisis is a common one: 68 per cent of our respondents agreed with the inevitability of their organisations facing a crisis in the future – though few could have anticipated something as global and dramatic as Covid-19. A hack that exposes millions of customers’ data. A major holiday product launch pushed into next year. A chairman’s immediate dismissal for misconduct. An employee’s misstep gone viral. The circumstances of an organisation’s next major crisis vary, but its appearance is inevitable. While crises differ in character, scale and scope, the following three aspects are true no matter the organisation, industry, or geography.
First, learning from a crisis requires moving into crisis mode.
When facing a crisis, organisations must make a deliberate break from their traditional ways of working. Operating as business as usual prevents organisations from isolating their in-crisis learnings and applying them to post-crisis improvements.
Second, organisations that emerge stronger post-crisis make crisis mode shifts in two key areas: people and process.
Organisations with increased flexibility in internal processes, as well as those that empowered non-leadership-level employees who were closer to the crisis to make decisions, tended to emerge stronger post-crisis than those that didn’t.
And finally, crisis mode forces organisations to examine four key areas, regardless of whether they’re post-crisis or enjoying business as usual:
prioritisation of strategic initiatives, speed in decision-making and execution of processes, empowerment of teams, and commitment to internal communication. Information must flow and communication needs to be transparent and consistent.
Less inevitable, however, is an organisation finding a positive outcome in the wake of a crisis. While of course no leader would ever wish for a crisis to happen, it doesn’t need to spell disaster. On the contrary: it is possible for certain opportunities to emerge from a crisis and have a lasting positive influence on a business. A crisis can bring out the best in your staff, unearth improvements in processes, and reveal new business opportunities, all of which can—and should—influence post-crisis strategy and the way forward.
So, how can organisations ensure that they grow stronger in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic? There is, of course, no simple answer. But, there is a straightforward challenge: how best to use technology to maximise people. Technology and people. People leveraging technology.
There is a pressing need to accelerate digital transformation. MuleSoft’s Connectivity Benchmark survey found that 97 per cent of IT decision-makers are involved in digital transformation initiatives at their respective organisations. A survey of directors, CEOs and senior executives found that digital transformation risk was the number one concern of companies in 2019. That was before the pandemic. Now, we expect that the majority of decision-makers in organisations are currently involved in one way or another in digital transformation – whether it is updating their systems or completely reconfiguring their technologies to support a pivot in strategic direction.
However, if digital transformation is at the top of leaders’ agenda, we need to learn some fundamental lessons pretty quickly. There is an abundance of research suggesting that organisations repeatedly struggle with converting digital transformation from idea to reality. An amazing 70 per cent of all digital transformation initiatives fail to reach their goals. Of the $1.3 trillion that was spent on digital transformation in one year, it was estimated that $900 billion went to waste.
Mike Sutcliff, Raghav and Aarohi Sen identified the two main reasons why digital transformations hit the corporate buffers: unspoken disagreement among top managers about goals; and a divide between the digital capabilities supporting the pilot and the capabilities available to support scaling it.
The crucial realisation must be that digital transformation – now more than ever – requires organisations and leaders to put people first. In their work looking at why some digital transformation efforts succeed, and others fail, Behnam Tabrizi, Ed Lam, Kirk Girard and Vernon Irvin simply conclude that “digital transformation is not about technology.” “Most digital technologies provide possibilities for efficiency gains and customer intimacy. But if people lack the right mindset to change and the current organisational practices are flawed, digital transformation will simply magnify those flaws,” they say, going on to recommend that leaders re-connect with the fundamentals, to focus “on changing the mindset of [an organisation’s] members as well as the organisational culture and processes before they decide what digital tools to use and how to use them. What the members envision to be the future of the organisation drove the technology, not the other way around”.
The route to digital transformation must be inside-out and it must be an employee transformation. Central to a framework developed by Brightline — the Brightline Transformation Compass – is the realisation that a successful transformation is about building a movement that aligns inside-out and outside-in approaches. Such a transformation is led by committed senior leaders inside your organisation, and authored and driven by large numbers of your own employees – the management and frontline team members who have a stake in your success. It is not a cookie-cutter exercise created and executed by armies of consultants. The approach works because of the focus on personal transformation; building employee commitment and motivation by enabling them to craft their own transformation journey.
This approach is not insular – it relies on a deep empathy with customers, and an understanding of the megatrends that shape their behaviour. In an age of social distance, it involves breaking down traditional barriers and eliminating unnecessary organisational impediments to making direct connections – and that is where the technology comes in.
,
