Rebuilding the plane in flight – Finding Your Purpose

Session three in The Icehouse’s new Digital Transformation programme focuses on bringing to the surface the purpose of your business and its fundamental personality that underpins all the standard functional aspects of any business. This, again, helps orientate the next stage of thought-process and meaningful decision-making around digital transformation.

How? The session begins by understanding your why. Many business leaders get lost on their journey or are searching for an impossible destination. Their businesses are operating in constant chaos, where disconnected decision-making and unsuccessful and unworkable processes are the norm. To fix this, businesses need re-engineering, rewiring and a sudden halt in operations, but you can’t stop, refuel mid-air, and you certainly can’t land. Hence, rebuilding the plane in flight.

“As business leaders, you need to carve some space out in your world, to create headroom for yourself and others in the organisation to be able to do this. You need to be in the rhythm of constantly rebuilding your business,’ says Brett Roberts, the programme’s co-lead facilitator.

As Brett explains, digital transformation (DX) is about doing things significantly differently (operating model) or doing significantly different things (business model). Successful businesses don’t simply take their existing operations and wrap them up in technology without establishing their why, what it is they’re doing, and why they're doing it.

They develop brand essence and personality, purpose and meaning, and throughout the session, participants will discover why this is critical for success, how DX can help, then how getting your people onboard matters, and how that ultimately affects your customers.

“DX has a huge impact internally,’ says Kevin D’Ambros-Smith, co-lead facilitator. ‘The minute you start talking to staff about how you’re going to automate things, for example, you must make sure that your people want to be brought along for the ride.

“The cultural piece [for any business embracing DX] is front and centre, you develop a culture where everyone has a job as leaders, and that these people are inspired, energised and want to contribute.”

You can have a great product, but a business with the wrong culture is still not going to be generally not successful. With your why and your culture in place it’s time to fly.

The syllabus also answers critical next questions around why it is essential to influence your customers to buy into you as a business.

“The more you know your why, the more you can understand your customers and give them the best experience,’ adds Kevin. “Digital is just one way of understanding and solving your customers problems, having a closer relationship with your customers and offering them a better experience.”

The rest of session three draws on fascinating concepts around co-design, moving from operational to strategic models and the five levers model, and how involving all stakeholders in the processes required to ensure innovation and change meets their needs, and the needs of teams and their customers.

DX is about doing things digitally that you didn't use to do, especially things you couldn't do without digital capabilities. As new technologies become available, the questions for owners to think about is – how do you solve old problems with new technology? Or how do you do new things and deliver new value with that technology?

It begins at the top and seeps through to every pore of the organisation. This might involve being open to change and willing to use DX to help you get there faster and easier. When you know your why and the team is pulling in the same direction, everything can change, in ways easier than you think.

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