Why I’ve written this book
The starting point for Digital Business Transformation was to help business leaders get past what can be the hardest part of any personal or enterprise transformation: the choices they make every day to move towards what will drive future success. Often, this will mean letting go of things that made us successful in the past, to make room for new skills, relationships, ways of working and opportunities.
I write from a practical perspective developed from decades of partnering with large, established businesses on how to take a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach enabled by digital and a particular set of capabilities. What I mean by digital business transformation (DBT) is this: rather than digitizing parts of the business or adding digital revenues as a stopgap, DBT is about becoming digital at the core to build and sustain customer relevance, maintain competitive advantage and protect from competitive risk.
“In a world where much of what we do and know has gone digital in the space of an average CEO's career – and the rest of it is not far behind – established businesses need help. They need help to balance the pressure to perform in their current context with the need to transform in the context of a digital world.”
— Nigel Vaz, Digital Business Transformation
Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue – January 2021
New tools from the book
SPEED Capabilities
The SPEED capabilities are the essence of what it means to be a digital company and will continue to evolve over time. SPEED stands for Strategy – developing and testing your hypothesis on priority value pools. Product – evolving at pace and scale. Experience – how you can enable value for customers. Engineering – delivering on your promise at pace and scale. Data – validating hypotheses and uncovering insights for constant iteration.
D-3 Model: Defend, Differentiate, Disrupt
Determine ‘where to play?’ by looking at your market differently. Will you Defend, and serve existing markets and audiences? Will you Differentiate, by advancing your digital capability to enter new markets and audiences? Or will you Disrupt, and create markets and audiences through new business models and ventures?
How to Win
The three models of transformation are Evolve, Attack or Jump. When you choose to Evolve, you incrementally transform toward a more effective future model. To Attack you launch a new proposition, which generates a new revenue stream. When you Jump, you create a new shell onto which the existing business can migrate.
Ten components of successful Digital Business Transformation
1. Always remember the ultimate goals of DBT: Creating an organization that can continually change at pace with the changes around it; Constructing the capability to identify and realize value through digital for your customers and business
2. Align the team around a shared vision
3. Get C-level buy in
4. Anchor in outcomes
5. Seize your quick wins and communicate
6. Move fast
7. Be thoughtful about your governance choices
8. Choose partners who will co-create and are a fit for your team
9. Keep your teams small and cross-functional
10. Consider new approaches to funding that match the way projects work