{"id":6258,"date":"2020-02-21T06:53:49","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T11:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=6258"},"modified":"2020-12-18T22:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T03:23:26","slug":"first-law-of-digital-transformation-3-core-elements-to-manage-digital-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/first-law-of-digital-transformation-3-core-elements-to-manage-digital-change\/","title":{"rendered":"First Law of Digital Transformation: 3 Core Elements to Manage Digital Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Gordon Moore<\/a>, Intel co-founder, observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.\u00a0 He projected that this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade.<\/p>\n

His observation, termed the \u201cMoore\u2019s Law,\u201d has correctly predicted the pace of innovation for several decades and guided strategic planning and research and development in the semiconductor industry.\u00a0 Moore\u2019s law is based on observation and projection of historical trends.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Gordon Moore foresaw that the rate of progress would reach saturation.\u00a0 In fact, semiconductor advancement has declined industry-wide since 2010, much lower than the pace predicted by Moore’s law.\u00a0 The doubling time and semi-conductor performance has changed, but it has not impacted the nature of the law much.<\/p>\n

Although many people predict the demise of Moore\u2019s law, exponential growth in computing power persists with the emergence of innovative technologies.\u00a0 Moore\u2019s law is only part of the equation for effective Digital Transformation<\/a>\u2014there are other contributing factors including the role of leadership.<\/p>\n

First Law of Digital Transformation <\/strong><\/h2>\n

George Westerman\u2014a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management\u2014proposes a new law, which states that, \u201cTechnology changes quickly, but organizations change much more slowly<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 The law known as the \u201cFirst Law of Digital Transformation<\/a>\u201d or \u201cGeorge\u2019s Law\u201d is a pretty straightforward observation, but is often ignored by the senior leadership. \u00a0This is why Digital Transformation is considered more of a leadership\u2014than technical\u2014issue.<\/p>\n

Just announcing an organization-wide Transformation program does not change the enterprise.\u00a0 According to George\u2019s Law, successful Digital Transformation hinges on the abilities of senior leadership to effectively manage the so many contrasting mindsets of its workforce, identify and take care of the idiosyncrasies associated with these mindsets, interpret their desires, and focus attention on encouraging people to change.<\/p>\n

Above all, the leadership should focus on converting Digital Transformation from a project to a critical capability.\u00a0 This can be done by shifting emphasis from making a limited investment to establishing a sustainable culture of Digital Innovation Factory that concentrates on 3 core elements:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Provide People with a Clear and Compelling Vision<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Invest in Upgrading or Replacing Legacy Technology Infrastructure<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Change the Way the Organization Collaborates<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s now discuss the first 2 elements of the First Law of Digital Transformation.<\/p>\n

    Provide People with a Clear and Compelling Vision<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Without a clear and compelling transformative vision, organizations cannot gather people to support the change agenda.\u00a0 People can be either change resisters, bystanders, or change enablers.\u00a0 However, most people typically tend to like maintaining the status quo, ignore change, or choose to openly or covertly engage in a battle against it.<\/p>\n

    For the employees to embrace change, leadership needs to make them understand what\u2019s in it for them during the transition and the future organizational state.\u00a0 This necessitates the leaders to develop and share a compelling vision to help the people understand the rationale for change, make people visualize the positive outcomes they can achieve through Transformation, and what they can do to enable change.\u00a0 A compelling vision even urges the people to recommend methods to turn the vision into reality.<\/p>\n

    Invest in Upgrading or Replacing Legacy Technology Infrastructure<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Problems and shortcomings in the legacy platforms is an important area to focus on during Digital Transformation.\u00a0 The legacy technology infrastructure, outdated systems, unorganized processes, and messy data are the main reasons for organizational lethargy.\u00a0 These issues hinder the availability of a unified view of the customer, implementing data analytics, and add to significant costs in the way of executing Digital Transformation.<\/p>\n

    Successful Digital Innovation necessitates the organizations to invest in streamlining the legacy systems and setting up new technology platforms that are able to enable digital and link the legacy systems.\u00a0 Fixing legacy platforms engenders leaner and faster business processes and helps in maintaining a steady momentum of Innovation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Interested in learning more about the First Law of Digital Transformation?\u00a0 You can download an editable PowerPoint on First Law of Digital Transformation<\/strong> here<\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Do You Find Value in This Framework?<\/h2>\n

    You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library<\/a>. FlevyPro<\/a> is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:<\/p>\n

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    “As a small business owner, the resource material available from FlevyPro has proven to be invaluable. The ability to search for material on demand based our project events and client requirements was great for me and proved very beneficial to my clients. Importantly, being able to easily edit and tailor the material for specific purposes helped us to make presentations, knowledge sharing, and toolkit development, which formed part of the overall program collateral. While FlevyPro contains resource material that any consultancy, project or delivery firm must have, it is an essential part of a small firm or independent consultant’s toolbox.”<\/p>\n

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    “FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight \u2013 it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”<\/p>\n

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    \u2013 Omar Hern\u00e1n Montes Parra, CEO at Quantum SFE<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Gordon Moore, Intel co-founder, observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.\u00a0 He projected that this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. His observation, termed the \u201cMoore\u2019s Law,\u201d has correctly predicted the pace of innovation for several decades and guided strategic planning and… First Law of Digital Transformation: 3 Core Elements to Manage Digital Change<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":6387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84,408],"tags":[635,228,1914,917,1913,1912,388,232,1083],"class_list":["post-6258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-information-technology","category-management-leadership","tag-change","tag-change-management","tag-digital-innovation","tag-digital-transformation","tag-first-law-of-digital-transformation","tag-moores-law","tag-strategy-2","tag-technology","tag-vision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6258"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7843,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions\/7843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}