Lindsay Herbert - Digital Transformation: Build Your Organization’s Future for the Innovation Age

Digital Transformation deftly outlines five stages, from constructing bridges to disseminating insights, for organizations to implement sustainable change. Herbert recognizes that the challenge is not the tools but the culture the vital ingredient for the digital shift from customer experience to back office systems.

Perry Hewitt, Vice President of Marketing, ITHAKA

This book contains rarely found and rarely used common sense for the over hyped and jargon fuelled trend of digital transformation. Lindsay uses her experience and communications skills to provide clear guidance for this important element of business evolution in a well-structured logical format.

Paul Hoskins, Chairman, Precedent

This book is the Quora of Digital Transformation. Lindsay Herbert has done a superb job of outlining and answering so many questions that arise from Digital Transformation, both for business leaders and for consultants. In digital we need to question everything and look for the answerluckily much of it is here.

Peter Abraham, Co-founder, Crank

For once here is a practical and unbiased guide to corporate digital transformation. Lindsay has managed to pull together a great mix of evidencebased analysis and a clear roadmap to follow that in my experience actually works. I recommend any modern, serious business leader reads it.

Adam Freeman, Co-founder, Freeformers

I was privileged to work with Lindsay and see her undoubted skills in action in live digital transformation projects, she was simply brilliant. And under the sub-headings of Bridge, Uncover, Iterate, Leverage and Disseminate she does a wonderful job on explaining how it should be done in todays digital world. A great read.

Phil Jones, Founder and Organiser, Podge Events

Lindsays clear-headed approach to digital transformation sweeps away the misconceptions and demystifies the jargon surrounding it. She provides hugely useful suggestions with the BUILD model and has delightfully counterintuitive advice, such as reigning in the urge for PR campaigns until you have actually delivered tangible change. Her insights will prove valuable to anyone on this challenging (and rewarding) journey.

Eva Appelbaum, Founder and Consulting Partner, The Arc Group;

Ex-Head of Digital Transformation at the BBC

Lindsay breaks down what can be intimidating concepts of digital transformation, but without understating its complexity and difficulty. She emphasizes the importance of fundamental mind shift one that embraces change as a constant.

Mike Giresi, Chief Information Officer, Royal Caribbean Cruises

Transforming your organisation can be a terrifying prospect, full of fear and stress. This book makes it into a thrilling one, full of hope and purpose.

Ben Hammersley, futurist

In todays business world, there is nothing more essential and at the same time more confusing and intricate than the concept of Digital Transformation. With an astute and engaging style, Lindsay Herbert unravels one of the most important challenges for the futureproofing of organisations. An obliged reading for all executives.

William Confalonieri, Australias first Chief Digital Officer

DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION

DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION

Build Your Organizations Future
for the Innovation Age

LINDSAY HERBERT

Bloomsbury Business

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The effort of writing a book is surprisingly similar to that needed to lead a major digital transformation programme. Both are fraught with false starts, wrong turns, and are equally likely to cause deep resentment towards anyone with free-time or regular access to sunlight and fresh air.

But the other common factor is that neither can be accomplished without help. Whether its specialist knowledge from experts, or just well placed empathy from loved ones, success comes from building on the support you find around you, in every form it might take.

In my case, my biggest source of support came from Joseph Da Silva, my husband, who moonlighted as both proofreader and research assistance, and whose unflappable optimism and unwavering belief in me was the only light I needed to guide me through the bleakest and weariest of times.

My mother, Cathy Davis-Herbert, was also an incredible source of support, even with thousands of miles between us. In the spirit of Design Thinking, she was also my representative audience member, shouting jargon or just nodding off when things got too dry or technical.

Jen Janzen, dear friend and to my great fortune professional editor and writer, is to thank for translating many of my words into those of a coherent person. No small feat under normal circumstances, but Jen managed it under a deadline shorter and less forgiving than an Agile sprint.

My publisher, Ian Hallsworth, was also an incredible source of support because without his advice and fortifying professional belief, my ideas and research would still be sitting undeveloped on a laptop, and not in the hands of people leading change for their own organizations around the world.

Finding time to write while working a more than full-time new role was thanks to Debbie Vavangas, Global Partner at IBM and all-round superhuman. Debbie helped me safeguard just enough of my personal time that I avoided needing hospitalization, or moving the publishing date to 2027.

I also must profoundly thank the many professionals who shared their lessons of innovation over the past three years. Each persons contributions made the book what it is, and repeatedly reignited my own passion for the topic a necessity among the hundreds of lonely hours spent writing in a windowless, soundproofed room (the by-product of having a professional musician for a spouse).

Lastly, I want to thank my biggest inspiration when it comes to embracing change itself. My grandmother, Pamela Herbert, raised six children across almost as many countries, treating each move with the same adventurous spirit that she continues to treat new challenges today. I grew up on stories of how she adapted and thrived whether fending off real danger, including an attempted kidnapping, or managing everyday trials, like trying to find OXO cubes in 1960s Benghazi. My grandmother continues to inspire me to embrace change today, and I tried to write this book in her spirit in the hopes it will help others do the same.

INTRODUCTION:
How to Digitally Transform

Turn your company into one that thrives in a changing environment by using the five stages followed by all successful digital transformations.

Digital transformation. Its a buzzword that appears on boardroom agendas everywhere, but anxieties about what it is, how it works, and what it means for business processes are still crippling many organizations into inaction, with many struggling to even articulate what is it theyre failing to do.

For this reason, I want to dive straight in to getting you the most critical information about successful digital transformation starting with the three biggest misconceptions about it.

Misconception 1: Digital transformation needs a big budget before it can even start.

It doesnt matter its sector or size; your organization can absolutely afford to do digital transformation. In fact, there are more examples of failed digital transformations that start with big budgets than those who started with small investments in critical areas.

As youll see in the examples throughout this book, the vast majority of success cases never attribute money specifically to transforming. Digitally savvy organizations simply tackle the job on a more manageable project-by-project basis.