The Importance of Culture for Digital Transformation Success
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast.' This quote, attributed to Peter Drucker, serves as a reminder that a strong and empowering culture is a more dependable and sustainable approach towards achieving success than strategy alone.
Strategy holds its own importance, but it should never overshadow the role of culture. Peter Drucker's statement emphasises that an organisation's culture, encompassing its values, norms, and behaviours, greatly influences the implementation of its strategy. Even a well-crafted strategy can stumble within a toxic culture, while a positive and robust culture can drive success, even in the absence of flawless strategic plans.
Striking the right balance
A strong organisational approach can foster a culture of innovation, collaboration and adaptability that are key components of digital transformation success.
When people aren’t constrained by the fear of failure, they are freed to take the perspective that the more they try and experiment, the better the results will be. This mindset is a crucial component for success when introducing new processes or ways of thinking that form the foundation of larger business transformation projects.
It is about finding the right balance. A homogeneous culture is one where everyone is highly aligned and thinks alike. However, too much of this can cause some organisations to become stuck in their ways, hindering innovation due to lack of flexibility in processes and thinking.
A heterogenic culture allows for diversity in character and content, which is key for innovative thinking and implementation of new projects and processes. It means not always viewing things through the same lens and enables the development of new approaches to address customer needs and foster agility. However, if everyone in the business is doing their own thing, it can lead to fragmentation. Thus, having the right amount of a homogeneous culture as well as heterogeneous culture is important for the organisation to move in the same direction and allow for change and transformation.
Striking the right balance involves having a homogeneous culture where everyone is on the same page and has a strong sense of belonging, while also encouraging independent thought and innovation.
Getting this balance right is crucial. A significant percentage of digital transformation projects fail because not enough focus is placed on people and culture. Often, the focus is primarily on strategy and technology.
However, this does not imply that culture should be the sole focus. For digital transformation to truly succeed organisations need to take a holistic view. By acknowledging the importance of the following five areas: People & Culture, Technology & Data, Strategy, Operations, and Consumers & Customers, and considering all of them when embarking on the digital transformation journey, will you be on the road to success.
How to achieve it
Top-down support is crucial for creating an open-minded culture where people are encouraged to share their learnings, both through successes and failures.
It is essential to build a culture based on relations, networking, collaboration, trust, helpfulness and critical reflection, where optimisation is sought, and knowledge and learning are shared and enacted frequently. To cultivate such a culture, a structure is needed that provides enough flexibility while also offering guidance.
At Fiora Consultancy we have helped several clients transform their culture. We understand that digital maturity is a complex journey, but with our expertise and proven methodologies, we are confident in our ability to guide you towards success.