Too many digital transformations fail. Success requires leaders with a disciplined mindset
Your digital transformation cannot fail. But many do, and the problem is not technology. The real challenge is transforming the organization.
Success today requires correcting the current imbalance between strategy and implementation, and demands that organizations understand how to implement in a digital world. Not only does a company need to transform itself: at the same time, it needs to identify and adopt the right digital technologies.
Previously, these were two separate implementation initiatives, with each one providing its own unique challenges. Today, digital transformation requires leaders to simultaneously embrace transformation and adopt digital technologies. This starts with a disciplined mindset.
Only one in three strategy implementations succeed. Failure is defined as when an organization does not meet a minimum of 50% of its strategic objectives within a stated time. What makes failure particularly painful is that leaders know what to do, but get lost somewhere between thought and action, losing momentum. Leaders know this. Yet strategy implementation keeps failing because companies lack the discipline to do it right.
The disciplined mindset
The difference between leaders who excel at strategy implementation and those who don’t comes down to discipline. Top-performing disciplined leaders do what others are unwilling or lack the commitment to do, have a high level of tenacity, and follow through by holding employees accountable. Disciplined leaders stand out because they make things happen. They can be counted on to drive a company’s strategy effectively and model what is required. These leaders don’t accept mediocrity; they constantly seek improvement in themselves, their employees, the company and most importantly for their customers.
Such leadership behavior is contagious. In his classic book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that “a culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.” Yet discipline must start with the habits, routines and rigor of leadership, so a key question becomes, “What approaches will set the tone for a deeper culture of discipline?”
As stewards, leaders are responsible for both crafting and implementing the strategy with an equal balance of passion and tenacity. To support the development of the right discipline, senior leaders need to consider the following.
1. Building the right environment
When working in a digitally driven organization, departments are asked to collaborate with each other and are encouraged to share information and data, especially when they’re adopting agility at scale. If employees are working in cubicles and silos, however, the environment is working against what leaders are asking them to do.
The layout, design and comfort of a workplace affects productivity and morale. Well-lit, ergonomically designed, and aesthetically pleasing environments can boost employee satisfaction and efficiency while encouraging collaboration and communication. Conversely, an environment of nosy cubicle spaces and an absence of meeting areas can lead to discomfort, distraction, and reduced productivity. The working environment needs to support and encourage the discipline to take the right actions.
One company moved to a new office that overlooked the river. Traditionally, the office space with the picturesque view would have been allocated to the senior leader’s office. On this occasion, however, this space was designed as a shared work area for employees to have meetings and take breaks. This sent a powerful message throughout the company and reinforced the importance its leaders placed on collaboration and their employees.
As Chip Heath, fellow at Duke University, and Dan Heath, professor at Stanford University, have written: “By simply tweaking the environment, you can make your change initiative more effective.”
Perpetual Guardian is a 240-employee company in New Zealand that manages trusts, wills and estates. In 2018, it ran an experiment to see how employees would react to working 32 hours a week instead of 40 hours for the same pay. The employees reported they felt less pressured and more involved in their work than before. Interestingly, productivity increased 30-40% as a result of holding shorter meetings, and employees posting ‘do not disturb’ times.
To encourage employees to collaborate across departments, create an environment that encourages the right actions.
2. Balance home and office environments
A critical environmental component is working from home versus coming into the office to work. Many leaders are still searching for the right balance for their employees.
In 2022, the BBC reported on research that involved more than 20,000 employees in 11 countries. It showed that 87% of workers felt they worked as efficiently or more so from home – but 80% of managers disagreed with their assessment.
Both Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, and Ryan Roslansky, head of LinkedIn, say employers are grappling with perhaps the biggest shift in working patterns in history. The jury is still out on the right balance and, when employees work from home, how leaders can build a positive company culture. A common rule of thumb now adopted by many high-performing companies is for employees to spend 60% of the time at the office and 40% at home.
3. Discipline: not repeating past mistakes
Leaders habitually repeat past mistakes. It still amazes me that when leaders implement a new strategy, they repeat old mistakes but expect a different outcome. This highlights why a new approach and mindset are required to do it right.
Leaders need to develop the discipline to learn from previous implementations by examining what went right, what went wrong, and what could have been done better. Then, recommendations must be made as to what the company needs to do differently in its new implementation to ensure the right actions are being taken to drive the implementation forward.
As Piyush Gupta, chief executive of Singapore-based DBS Bank, has put it: “The greatest of strategies will fail if not executed well, and execution is a discipline that can be learned.”
4. Focus on less to achieve more
This may appear to be counterintuitive, yet it is one of the most powerful best practices for implementing in a digital world. At the rollout of a new strategy, large amounts of work need to be done. Every activity seems important and urgent. Discipline is required for leaders to prioritize and recognize what can be achieved when they focus on “less” rather than “more” actions.
When the focus is on more, employees become confused about what is important. They compete for limited resources, attend an endless number of meetings, can’t get ahead of their work, and fight a slow and often bureaucratic culture as they try to please everyone (often ending up pleasing no one). The ‘less is more’ technique creates a disciplined, focused, resource-rich, implementation-concentrated culture in which employees have the time, space and support to do their daily work, as well as take the right implementation actions.
People assume that having more choices will make them happier, but this isn’t true. In fact, having more choices makes people unhappier, and having too much choice can be a hindrance. Decision paralysis can even disrupt Cupid. For example, during speed-dating events for singles in search of a romantic partner, it’s been found that people who meet eight potential romantic partners one-on-one make more connections than those who meet 20 other daters. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper, he was urged to spend longer stretches on the masterpiece, to which he replied, “The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less.”
In business, applying the less is more technique raises the question, “How many strategy objectives should an organization focus on every 12 months?” Research shows diminishing returns from having more objectives. When an organization focuses on three objectives, it usually achieves all three. When it focuses on 4-10 objectives, it achieves one or two. When it focuses on 11-20 objectives in a year, it achieves none. This is because resources run thin, employees get confused about their priorities, and everyone gets overwhelmed by the number of meetings they need to attend. Everybody is working hard, but nothing is getting done.
A disciplined focus on just three objectives over 12 months sends a clear message to employees about what is important and where to prioritize. It focuses the organization, reduces the number of meetings, and allows for more effective allocation of resources. As Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, once said: “I don’t look to jump over seven-foot bars. I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.”
One critical area where the principle of less is more desperately needs to be applied is meetings in organizations. Many leaders and employees repeatedly run, or click, from one meeting to the next, day after day. Only after office hours can they catch up on emails and action items at their desks.
Freeing up space for employees to take the right actions is essential. The costs of poor meeting discipline are stunning. Steven Rogelberg, a professor at North Carolina University, calculates that 55 million meetings a day occur in the US alone. Yet, according to one 2022 study by Otter.ai, nearly a third of meetings are unnecessary, and large companies could save as much as $100 million a year by holding fewer unnecessary meetings and cutting down on their invite lists. A Harvard Business School study found that CEOs spend 72% of their total work time in meetings, and many were far too long – they could be cut in half.
As Peter Drucker put it, “Meetings are a symptom of bad organizations. The fewer the meetings, the better.” Having too many meetings is a critical area where leaders lack the discipline to change their organizational structure to enable the implementation of their digital transformations.
Note that applying the less is more technique is not only about having fewer meetings – it includes organizing them to take up less time. By default, most meetings are organized for 60 minutes. It’s amazing how the agenda always manages to fill the time allocated. Instead, identify the objective for the meeting and allocate a reasonable time. When possible, make it less than 60 minutes.
Shopify is an example of a company that addressed the challenge of too many meetings. Its leaders told their employees it was wiping out all recurring meetings with more than two people in perpetuity, as part of what it called a “calendar purge.” Employees were told to scrap all meetings on Wednesdays, and that any meetings of more than 50 people could only take place during a six-hour window on Thursdays. Overall, Shopify employees were encouraged to say no to meetings and remove themselves from large internal chat groups.
The imperative for discipline
The implementation of a disciplined mindset is essential for digital transformation. Adopting the behaviors that underpin good discipline needs to be a priority for leaders, if for no other reason that customers notice your implementation, not your strategy. Implementation of discipline isn’t rocket science; it’s common sense. But just because it’s common sense doesn’t mean it’s common practice.