the essence of digital transformation

The essence of digital transformation is to become a data-driven organization, ensuring that key decisions, actions, and processes are strongly influenced by data-driven insights, rather than by human intuition. In other words, you will only transform when you have managed to change how people behave, and how things are done in your organization.

The Essential Components of Digital Transformation by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Harvard Business Review. November 23, 2021

bring data to the table

In the wry words of N.R. Narayana Murthy, former chairman of Infosys, “In God we Trust; everybody  else brings data to the table.” Managing the program dynamically depends on good data. You have to be clear from day to day how much progress you’ve made against your plans. That means regularly measuring the impact of your change program on at least four key dimensions:

1. Initiative progress. Track progress not just in terms of time (milestones) and budget (money spent versus planned), but also against key operational performance indicators (e.g., cycle time, waste, wait times, quality). 

2. Health impact. Are management practices and their underlying mindsets and behaviors shifting to support the improvements in performance that you want to see? Targeted analytics, surveys, focus groups, and observation can give you a good read.... 

3. Performance impact. Measure key business outcomes such as revenue, cost, and risk to confirm that improvements are happening where you expect and not causing unforeseen consequences elsewhere in the organization. 

4. Value creation. Keep a constant eye on the ultimate outcome that matters. In large-scale company-wide change programs, this measure is shareholder value creation…. It is vital to have a clear-eyed view of the ultimate outcome that maters most amidst all of the other data. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

stick to one theme per slide

The designers behind Apple’s presentation slides once told me they stick to one theme per slide. Don’t try to cram too much content—too many ideas—on one slide. That goes for statistics, too. For example, think about how many slides you would create if you delivered the following idea: “The developer program is incredibly vibrant. We have over six million registered developers. Demand for this show has never been greater. We sold out in just over a minute [71 seconds].” Most people would put the two statistics, 6 million and 71 seconds, on one slide. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, had two slides. The first one simply read: 6 million. The second slide read: 71 seconds. The second slide also had the words “Sold Out” in red (see below). If a statistic is important enough for you to deliver and you want your audience to recall the data point, then it deserves its own slide.

Carmine Gallo

“10 Presentation Techniques You Can (And Should) Copy From Apple's WWDC Keynote.” Forbes. 6/11/2013