Book Discussion: The Technology Fallacy
Digital Transformations — it’s about the people! Taking a look at the in-depth and thoughtful ideas in The Technology Fallacy.
I’d like to discuss the: “ The Technology Fallacy” a book that has emerged from the annual work that MIT and Deloitte have partnered on, with Coming of Age Digitally being the most recent version. The book digs deeper into the topic and provides a view across multiple years of the study.
Digital transformation is hard. There are many aspects and complexities to consider in the transformation. The authors: Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, and Garth R. Andrus have provided a strong view into the complexities, considerations and thoughtfulness needed when pursuing a Digital transformation. And, right from the cover, they make it clear that people are the key to success (and I’ll add, the reason why transformation are so hard!).
By moving from a short publication to a full book, there’s space to get much more detailed — providing more insights and more guidance. Kane et al, take advantage of this space by offering a more fine-grained look at the data through the lens of Digital Maturity, which they define as: “aligning an organization’s people, culture, structure, and tasks to compete effectively by taking advantage of opportunities enabled by technological infrastructure, both inside and outside the organization.” Viewing transformation as an ongoing activity related to continuous growth and maturity appeals. Too often, transformation appears within organizations as “the” goal, an end state. Such a view misses the point of being digital and will lead to poor choices and disappointment. Further, this view on maturity is also helpful as it takes a broad view of the alignment needed to take advantage of technology. We can’t just focus on org structure or just some training. Without alignment, it will be impossible to build the trust needed to take chances, gaps in knowledge, or share vulnerability. And in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) — how far can we get without trust?
A few additional things I’d like to highlight:
- Importance of ongoing learning, adjustments and planning is critical to the success of having a digital strategy. If the digital world is dynamic and continuously changing, how can you have a strategy that is static and followed like a script?
- “In a digital environment, organizations must shift from a world of ‘scalable efficiency’ to one of ‘scalable learning.” This quote is introduced in discussions about “Digital Leadership” highlighting that there is a significant change in mindset needed — both from leadership and throughout the organization. Who cares about efficiency if we’re not creating the right products or offering the right services?
- Continuing on the topic of leadership, this following quote is important both for how we work and how we learn: “To enable change, organizations must harness effective leadership at all levels of the company….digitally maturing organizations are less hierarchical and drive more decision making down to lower levels, where those decisions can be made more quickly and in a more informed way.” This flattening of the organization is critical both for executing and for learning — with the two moving in lockstep.
- STEAM vs. STEM: I’m a fan of discussing STEAM rather than just STEM and appreciated seeing Kane et al. embracing this view as well. Diversity of backgrounds is needed in organizations and the teams within — and that diversity needs to include the arts.
- And one last quote that I’ll highlight sets the stage for discussion: “A key facet of developing digital talent is cultivating a growth mindset. Of course, no matter how much of a growth mindset you nurture, not everyone in your organization is capable of learning advanced technical skills, like Hadoop or machine learning. Yet, everyone can become more digitally literate, learn to adapt better to change, and think more critically-the skills our survey respondents identify as most important for success.”
And, if you prefer videos to reading, there’s quite a bit of related video available. As a bit of a primer on the topic, check out this video:
And there are a few deeper dives available as follows:
- The Technology Fallacy: An Introduction
- Technology Fallacy: Episode 1: Intro to Knowing-Doing Gap
- Technology Fallacy: Episode 2: Digital Absorption
- Episode 3: Digital Affordances
- Episode 4: Digital Attraction
- Episode 5: Digital Agility
Overall, the book is excellent and provides quite a bit to discuss and consider. I’ve touched upon some initial key thoughts and will look to add further commentary in future posts. In the meantime, here are a few questions to get discussion started:
- How are you seeing success in building a growth mindset?
- How are you building teams that embrace and benefit from diversity?
- How are you ensuring that everyone has digital literacy?
Originally published at https://blogs.ubc.ca on January 23, 2020.
