The same company, now on screens

The problem it solves

The form that used to be filled in by hand is now filled in on a screen, and the rest of the process is unchanged. The same signatures, the same handoffs between departments, the same wait between one step and the next, and at the end the same person copying the result somewhere else so that it can be used.

There is nothing wrong with digitising that way; often it is the right thing to do and all that was needed. The trouble starts with the label. A transformation is announced, an expectation is set that this work cannot meet, and when time passes and the business runs exactly as before, leadership concludes that the whole thing did not work. The spend gets reviewed, the supplier gets a look, and the idea is shelved.

What gets spent is not only the budget. The word gets spent. When the moment comes to propose a real change, one that redefines who approves what, what stops being done and how the service is delivered, the organisation will hear a term it has heard before and remember how that ended. The resistance that shows up then will not be irrational. It will be memory.

What it covers

The talk draws a distinction that seems obvious until it is applied to your own initiatives. Digitising replaces what a task runs on: what sat on paper moves to a screen, what was passed on by phone becomes a record. Transforming changes the design of the business: what the company promises, how it delivers, who decides what, and above all what it stops doing. These are different pieces of work, with different costs and different conversations around them.

Through case discussion the group examines initiatives presented as transformations that turned out to be substitutions of medium, and the opposite case too: modest-looking changes that did alter how the business runs because they removed an approval, moved a decision to a different level or closed off a way of working. The comparison makes one thing visible: the size of the budget does not predict which is which.

The second part is given over to a simple test participants apply in the room to their own live initiatives. Three questions: after this, who decides something differently; what stops being done; which promise to the client changes. If all three answers are none, the initiative may be useful and necessary, but it is not a transformation and it deserves its own name. The exercise tends to reorder a portfolio before the talk is over.

The closing section takes up the practical consequence of naming things accurately. A well-named digitisation is judged against what it promised, delivered and closed. A badly named transformation drags impossible expectations behind it and leaves the whole organisation more sceptical than it was. Participants leave with the written criterion and with their current initiatives sorted against it.

What participants learn

• Distinguish a substitution of medium from a change in the design of the business, using criteria that can be checked.
• Apply a three-question test to the initiatives currently open in your own company.
• Evaluate what expectation the name given to an initiative creates and what it costs to correct later.
• Identify the small changes that genuinely alter how the business runs and usually pass unnoticed.
• Compare the cost of a well-scoped digitisation with that of a transformation announced without a scope.

Agenda

1. 01What actually changes when you replace what a task runs on
2. 02What has to change before the word transformation is earned
3. 03The three-question test: who decides, what stops, which promise changes
4. 04Badly named initiatives and what it cost to correct the expectation
5. 05Small changes with real effect: removing an approval, moving a decision
6. 06Why the size of the budget tells you nothing about which is which
7. 07The cost of spending the word before the change that matters

What the organisation leaves with

• A written criterion separating digitisation from transformation, usable on the company's own initiatives.
• The currently open initiatives sorted against that criterion, renamed where the name was wrong.
• A list of the small high-effect changes the company had never counted as initiatives.
• Participants can tell, when a new proposal arrives, whether what is promised matches what will be done.