I’d like to discuss the: “The Technology Fallacy” a book that has emerged from the annual work that MIT and Deloitte have partnered on, with Coming of Age Digitally being the most recent version. The book digs deeper into the topic and provides a view across multiple years of the study.

Digital transformation is hard. There are many aspects and complexities to consider in the transformation. The authors: Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, and Garth R. Andrus have provided a strong view into the complexities, considerations and thoughtfulness needed when pursuing a Digital transformation. And, right from the cover, they make it clear that people are the key to success (and I’ll add, the reason why transformation are so hard!).

By moving from a short publication to a full book, there’s space to get much more detailed – providing more insights and more guidance. Kane et al, take advantage of this space by offering a more fine-grained look at the data through the lens of Digital Maturity, which they define as: “aligning an organization’s people, culture, structure, and tasks to compete effectively by taking advantage of opportunities enabled by technological infrastructure, both inside and outside the organization.” Viewing transformation as an ongoing activity related to continuous growth and maturity appeals. Too often, transformation appears within organizations as “the” goal, an end state. Such a view misses the point of being digital and will lead to poor choices and disappointment. Further, this view on maturity is also helpful as it takes a broad view of the alignment needed to take advantage of technology. We can’t just focus on org structure or just some training. Without alignment, it will be impossible to build the trust needed to take chances, gaps in knowledge, or share vulnerability. And in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) – how far cannot we get without trust?

A few additional things I’d like to highlight:

• Importance of ongoing learning, adjustments and planning is critical to the success of having a digital strategy. If the digital world is dynamic and continuously changing, how can you have a strategy that is static and followed like a script?
• “In a digital environment, organizations must shift from a world of ‘scalable efficiency’ to one of ‘scalable learning.” This quote is introduced in discussions about “Digital Leadership” highlighting that there is a significant change in mindset needed – both from leadership and throughout the organization. Who cares about efficiency if we’re not creating the right products or offering the right services?
• Continuing on the topic of leadership, this following quote is important both for how we work and how we learn: “To enable change, organizations must harness effective leadership at all levels of the company….digitally maturing organizations are less hierarchical and drive more decision making down to lower levels, where those decisions can be made more quickly and in a more informed way.” This flattening of the organization is critical both for executing and for learning – with the two moving in lockstep.
• STEAM vs. STEM: I’m a fan of discussing STEAM rather than just STEM and appreciated seeing Kane et al. embracing this view as well. Diversity of backgrounds is needed in organizations and the teams within – and that diversity needs to include the arts.
• And one last quote that I’ll highlight sets the stage for discussion: “A key facet of developing digital talent is cultivating a growth mindset. Of course, no matter how much of a growth mindset you nurture, not everyone in your organization is capable of learning advanced technical skills, like Hadoop or machine learning. Yet, everyone can become more digitally literate, learn to adapt better to change, and think more critically—the skills our survey respondents identify as most important for success.”

And, if you prefer videos to reading, there’s quite a bit of related video available. As a bit of a primer on the topic, check out this video:

And there are a few deeper dives available as follows:

1. The Technology Fallacy: An Introduction
2. Technology Fallacy: Episode 1: Intro to Knowing-Doing Gap
3. Technology Fallacy: Episode 2: Digital Absorption
4. Episode 3: Digital Affordances
5. Episode 4: Digital Attraction
6. Episode 5: Digital Agility

Overall, the book is excellent and provides quite a bit to discuss and consider. I’ve touched upon some initial key thoughts and will look to add further commentary in future posts. In the meantime, here are a few questions to get discussion started:

• How are you seeing success in building a growth mindset?
• How are you building teams that embrace and benefit from diversity?
• How are you ensuring that everyone has digital literacy?

I encourage you to take a look at a recent publication from Deloitte (via Wired Magazine) titled: “Digital Transformation: A Primer.” There are some very good concepts highlighted in this primer that can help you gain an appreciation for Digital Transformation (including Digital Learning).

They helpfully provide the following definition for Digital Transformation:

“Digital transformation is all about becoming a digital enterprise—an organization that uses technology to continuously evolve all aspects of its business models (what it offers, how it interacts with customers and how it operates).”

Some additional aspects that are worth noting:

• The Venn diagram showing the overlap of transforming the business and transforming the organization is particularly useful. I appreciate the focus on culture, new ways of working and building capabilities.
• The lenses through which to view transformation guide us to think broadly. We need to be careful that we do not limit ourselves or look at transformation too narrowly. From the list of lenses, I’m particularly interested in “Experiences & Engagement”, “Culture & Leadership”, “Organization & Workforce” and “Ambitions & Aspirations.” I’d even argue that this is where I’d start – as they provide the best foundation for learning. And if we’re learning, we can better tackle the other lenses.
• Speaking of ambitions – the advice for tackling ambitions is solid and worth keeping in mind. I like to share this idea (paraphrasing from Alice in Wonderland) – “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” If we are going to decentralize, democratize and empower learners – we better have clarity about our ambitions and make it easy for everyone to pursue.
• And last, but not least, it’s useful to have a model like Imagine, Deliver, Run to guide efforts to pull all of this together. The focus on iterative, incremental, and learning as you go serves the transformation and reinforces the learning mentality needed.

If your transformation is already in flight, what ambitions are you pursuing? How are you aligning learning and the larger transformation? What lessons have you learned along the way that you wish you had known at the outset of your journey?

“Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership and Legacy” is a joint publication from MIT and Deloitte discussing findings from the 2018 Digital Business Executive Study and Research Project. The findings are based on a global survey of over 4000 managers, execs and analysts. The research is further augmented by 17 interviews with execs and thought leaders. This research has been performed for a few consecutive years and provides some interesting insights in digital transformations (and learning!). I’m a fan of the publication for many reasons, here are a few:

• Digital maturity: I worry that Digital Transformation is seen as an event, goal or end state. The approach of discussing maturity and that we are always maturing resonates. It aligns with the idea that we are continuously learning, improving and adapting. Life is not static – there isn’t an end state for digital transformation. This also nicely aligns with the idea of having a growth mindset. All this is critically important as digital transformation is difficult.
• Stories and data: We relate to stories. Assessments of current state, setting of ambitions and charting a new path is difficult without insights into the experiences of others. Learning from the experience of others is valuable as it accelerates our own learning. Further, using external stories is a great way to open up a discussion.
  • While data is discussed throughout the paper, the end of the paper provides details on the questions from the survey and the responses.
• Progressing through iterations and experiments: The path of maturing and progressing is not simple nor linear. We need to find our way – figuring out the complexity of people, technology, markets, business models, operating models, customer models, and the larger ecosystem. Experiments are the means to finding our way. Further, how we approach experiments and the learning that occurs speaks to the maturity of the organization. Embracing and sharing progress and results from experiments is healthy and drives maturity (and growing maturity guides us to embrace and share results!). Most experiments lead to new discoveries – which is a nice way of saying, we get a result different than expected. In simple terms, we’d call this a failed experiment. But, I find that many organizations aren’t ready to embrace the idea of failures as a “good thing.”
• The criticality of learning: The data reflects the need to focus on learning for everyone in the organization. Further, it highlights the digital mindset, culture and pace of change that differentiates digital learning. At the timing of this survey, almost half of respondents recognize the need for continuous learning. I expect that this number is going to climb and soon everyone in the organization will recognize and demand support for continuous learning.
• Maturing companies build skills (continuously!): Organizations that are more digitally mature focus on building the skills of their employees. This connects back to the first point – transformations are not an end point. There needs to be a focus on continuous learning and development.

Here’s a video of the publication’s authors discussing the study:

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the study, the stories and the interpretations. And here’s a few questions to jumpstart the discussion:

• Which data points stand out most? Where there any data points that surprised you?
• Are you seeing any published data / surveys that show different viewpoints?
• How do the ideas from this publication compare to what you are seeing in your organization?