Stage |
Discipline |
Questions |
|
Goal Setting |
1. Does the proposed transformation use two or more of the following: exponential technologies, outcome-based models, or exponential ecosystems? |
|
|
2. Is the goal of your transformation to reinvent, as opposed to create incremental evolution? |
|
|
3. Is the goal to deliver one or more of the following: new business model transformation, new technology-enabled product adjacency, or 10X operating efficiencies? |
|
|
4. Is the intent of the transformation to drive a perpetual culture of transformation? |
|
|
5. Is the proposed transformation enterprise-wide, based on a formal strategy, and driven from the top? |
Foundation (Stage 1) |
Committed Ownership |
1. Is there complete and visible personal ownership of the digital strategy from the leader? |
|
|
2. Are there signs or plans in place for the leader to personally demonstrate new transformational behaviors? |
|
|
3. Are there structures in place to ensure that the leader translates business goals into transformation strategies and to personally engage in these going forward? |
|
|
4. Is there a mechanism in place for stakeholders to transparently understand issues during transformation and to break barriers constantly? |
|
|
5. Do your sponsors and senior leaders have sufficient digital literacy to drive the transformation? |
|
Iterative Execution |
1. Are you using an iterative, agile methodology like lean startup for execution of the project? |
|
|
2. Have you grouped your program into a portfolio of projects in a manner that allows for an optimal mix of high-risk and low-risk efforts? |
|
|
3. Has your digital transformation set up “innovation velocity” as a goal, and are there metrics associated with speed? |
|
|
4. Are there mechanisms such as the NGS 1-2-4-8-16 to help you drive speed/innovation velocity on your projects? |
|
|
5. Is there some method to address the “two-worlds” issue to allow the transformation to progress with lower overhead and faster speed than the core organization? |
Siloed (Stage 2) |
Disruption Empowerment |
1. Has a clear massive transformative purpose (MTP) been defined? |
|
|
2. Have the change leaders been informed about which specific elements of air cover they will receive as they drive change? |
|
|
3. Have the ancillary stakeholders and the change-affected been informed of their role to help the change? |
|
|
4. Has the leader identified and committed to personal skin in the game for the transformation? |
|
|
5. Has the leader “primed the pump” for change with a few initiatives to drive the momentum? |
|
Digital Leverage Points |
1. Have you examined all potential digital leverage areas, including creating new business models, new products, and disruptive operational excellence? |
|
|
2. Have you considered leverage possibilities external to your organization, including peers, suppliers, and customers? |
|
|
3. Have you lined up your digital disruption ideas with your most impactful strategic choices using the Business Model Canvas or a similar framework? |
|
|
4. Have you looked at all three exponential possibilities—exponential technologies, exponential processes, and exponential ecosystems—to identify the most disruptive digital possibilities? |
|
|
5. Have you used a nonlinear ideation process, such as design thinking, to create new big ideas? |
Partly Sync. (Stage 3) |
Effective Change Model |
1. Is there broad recognition and support, both among the leaders and the core organization, that change management will be ten times harder than the technology transformation itself? |
|
|
2. Have you sensed the conditions of the urgency to change vs. the organization’s operating attitude toward change and made efforts to target a particular change situation? |
|
|
3. Have you deliberately chosen an appropriate strategy for change management, i.e., organic change, edge organization structure, or inorganic change? |
|
|
4. Have you identified the roles and people who will likely be the “frozen middle”? |
|
|
5. Have you designed new reward systems within the core to motivate the frozen middle into the change effort? |
|
Strategy Sufficiency |
1. Have you designed mechanisms to generate a sufficient number of digital transformation projects in the core organization in an ongoing manner (intrapreneurship)? |
|
|
2. Do you have a mechanism that will allow you to take a select number of big, disruptive ideas from the pilot tests and scale them up rapidly? |
|
|
3. Do you have mechanisms, including risk/reward systems, that allow for at least 50 percent of your initiatives to fail forward? |
|
|
4. Have you separated resources and success criteria between the 70 (core operational activities), the 20 (continuous improvement activities of the core), and the 10 (disruptive innovation)? |
|
|
5. Have you identified the right metrics for success in order to celebrate digital transformation outcomes, not just corporate innovation theater activities? |
Fully Synch. (Stage 4) |
Digital Reorganization |
1. Have you created a strategy and tangible plans to address people re-skilling for the digital era in terms of leadership and employee digital literacy, policies for human/machine interface, fluid organization structures, digital security, etc.? |
|
|
2. Has there been a strategy to combine the various digital/IT functions in the enterprise into an enabling digital resources function? |
|
|
3. Has the digital resources function made plans to introduce more flexible and scalable technology platforms? |
|
|
4. Has the digital resources function upgraded its people capabilities to include more agility in execution, more expertise in new technology, and new capabilities to govern ecosystems? |
|
|
5. Have you updated your vendor ecosystem to line up with the skill sets necessary to win in the digitally transformed state? |
|
Staying Current |
1. Have you created a strategy to help the organization stay current on digital technologies? |
|
|
2. Is there a focused top management digital literacy program that helps executives set the tone on the expectation of digital literacy? |
|
|
3. Are you fully leveraging VCs and start-ups to understand the latest disruptions in your industry? |
|
|
4. Have you enrolled your vendors, partners, and tech-savvy users to provide ongoing education for free? |
|
|
5. Have you fully explored creating open ecosystems to generate large numbers of innovative use cases internally and externally, e.g., by opening up your data via APIs to select developers? |
Living DNA (Stage 5) |
Agile Culture |
1. Do you have an “agile culture” leg of your digital takeoff program that is aimed at sustaining ongoing transformation? |
|
|
2. Is there a strong, pervasive customer focus across the entire organization, and is your digital program going to further expand it? |
|
|
3. Have you established a safe “fail forward” culture among the core/receiving organization that enables smart risk taking? |
|
|
4. Have you communicated and developed a common purpose across the organization that will support the perpetual transformation? |
|
|
5. Have you generated a spirit of constant evolution, i.e., your organization appreciates that “change is the only constant”? |
|
Sensing Risk |
1. Have you incorporated a specific item in your annual strategy planning to sense and respond to digital disruption? |
|
|
2. Do you have a specific metric to gauge how much your industry is being digitally disrupted over time? |
|
|
3. Are you measuring quantitatively how much your customers are tilting the landscape toward digital disruption? |
|
|
4. Do you have a metric to capture how much the specific parts of your business model such as evolution of channels, partners, and activity systems are being transformed by digital? |
|
|
5. Are you measuring the state of investments in digital business and digital literacy in your enterprise? |