Uncharted:
Navigating the new landscape of digital transformation

Perhaps the biggest shift for many organizations is from thinking of digital transformation projects as rigid programs with a start and end date. Instead, businesses must orient toward practical, experimental models that allow for constant exploration and adaptation so they can stay ahead of changing markets and technologies.

Ruth Wooderson, CIO Fraud, Santander UK, echoed that sentiment and noted that the bank aims to balance longer-term planning with flexibility to adapt to changing customer demands and market conditions. “I don't think there will be an end state for Santander. We've created a strategic blueprint, and within that three- to five-year plan, we've got some iconic deliveries that we need to do. But I very much think that will then ebb and flow into another digital transformation, because the demands of the world will need us to do so.”

A slow-and-steady approach to innovation comes with an additional benefit for large, established brands, Wooderson notes. It helps maintain customer trust and keeps you from straying too far from your brand promise:

“You have to know where your North Star is, and you need to remain on track of what your values are, and what your mission statement is."

Another upside to a continuous innovation model? It can help reduce the temptation to fixate on a single transformation initiative. “The danger is that organizations will optimize for a very specific thing that becomes quickly out of date,” notes Ben Pitman, Director of Engineering Consultancy at Kin + Carta. “And the business will be so optimized and tied to that way of working, it becomes calcified and unable to further adapt to the next change.”

While ongoing digital transformation might lack a clear end date, organizations must still define metrics and targets that align with overall business objectives. You still need a compass to guide your efforts, measure progress, and communicate what you’re doing—and what you hope to achieve—to stakeholders inside and outside the organization.

Old-style digital transformation could be laborious, lengthy, and costly, but it often had a clear need—digitizing the business. As nearly every business becomes digital-first and adopts a continuous improvement model of digital transformation, companies need a new way to prioritize digital efforts. They need to be specific about what business problems they’re solving.

The challenge here is that the problems are much smaller—or at least, they feel smaller. Drumming up enthusiasm for digital change can be difficult when it’s always happening and the stakes are lower.

This is where the legacy of the term “digital transformation” can help, says Stephanie Shine, Strategy Principal at Kin + Carta. The term itself “gives a shared signal to all of those involved that there is an urgency and opportunity to fundamentally change—not necessarily the way that you do business altogether, but to improve what might not be working.”

Shine advises companies to go beyond a specific project, such as building an app, to investigate the problem and proposed solution. “By talking to some key stakeholders who are involved in the adjacent departments’ processes, you can get deeper into what's really broken or has friction that needs to be addressed as a part of whatever this theoretical technological build will be,” she says.

The key is to define what digital transformation means in your organization at that particular moment, says Virginia Venable, Client Partner at Kin + Carta. “This helps demystify it and determine what specific problems and opportunities exist.”

Who leads the way?

While digital transformation is clearly a priority, who owns this process isn’t always defined.

And while executives might be tempted to make this an entirely top-down exercise, it’s clear that modern digital transformation shouldn’t be confined to a department or role, but rather integrated into the organizational fabric. Every department and employee is responsible for digital transformation as an ongoing practice of continuous improvement.

This type of collaborative, all-hands approach is what Katie Franzen, VP of Financial Services at Kin + Carta, has in mind. She believes digital transformation isn’t just about tech; it’s a broader transformation that requires strategic alignment.

“I think that digital transformation really is just a transformation, and it’s a combination of leaders within an organization agreeing on what the value is that they’re trying to generate.”

Both top-down leadership and bottom-up participation are needed for successful digital transformation, Pitman says. Leaders need to provide vision and goals while also understanding the pain points of the people implementing changes. “A lot of failures in transformation result when people who don't understand how the work gets done start telling people how to do the work better. When that happens, the good part of what comes down from leadership is lost because it's shrouded in this autocratic point of view.”