The digital transformation paradox – filtering is the answer

Photo by vladans

There’s an old adage that “the confused mind always says no.”

Consider this from your own perspective. If you’re in a state of confusion about something, are you likely to commit wholeheartedly or will you look to delay / procrastinate?

The paradox for digital transformation is that our projects are almost always complex, but complexity breeds confusion and uncertainty. Transformation may be urgently needed, but it’s really hard to persuade stakeholders and sponsors to commit to change if they don’t have a clear picture of the way forward.

As change agents, we face another paradox. It’s our task to simplify the messaging. but our messaging should not imply that the project will be simple. That will just set unrealistic expectations for our stakeholders (“but this project was supposed to be simple,” they say).

Like all paradoxes, there’s no perfect solution. However, one technique that I’ve found to be useful is to narrow down the choices. Not by discarding them outright, but by figuring out filters – ways to quick include or exclude branches of the decision tree.

Let’s take the example of OSS vendor selection. An organisation asks itself, “what is the best-fit OSS/BSS for our needs?” The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory will show that there are well over 400 OSS/BSS providers to choose from. Confusion!

So let’s figure out what our needs are. We could dive into really detailed requirement gathering, but that in itself requires many complex decisions. What if we instead just use a few broad needs as our first line of filtering? We know we need an outside plant management tool. Our list of 400+ now becomes 20. There’s still confusion, but we’re now more targeted.

But 20 is still a lot to choose from. A slightly deeper level of filtering should allow us to get to a short list of 3-5. The next step is to test those 3-5 to see which does the best at fulfilling the most important needs of the organisation. Chances are that the best-fit won’t fulfil every requirement, but generally it will clearly fulfil more than any of the other alternatives. It’s best-fit, not perfect fit.

We haven’t made the project less complex, but we have simplified the decision. We’ve arrived at the “best” option, so the way forward should be clear right?

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. Even though the best way forward has been identified, there’s still uncertainties in the minds of stakeholders caused purely by the complexity of the upcoming project. I’ve seen examples where the choice of vendor has been clear, with the best-fit clearly surpassing the next-best, but the buyer is still indecisive. I completely get it. Our task as change agents is to reduce doubts and increase transformation confidence.

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