It is important to understand that each enterprise’s situation is unique and requires an individually adopted frame. That means you cannot buy a digital vision or use someone else’s vision. It is a dedicated effort by the enterprise to frame what digital means in its specific context. It is needless to say that, as organisations embark on such a journey, it is imperative that a digital transformation challenge is well framed when the transformation is launched. 

Using the picture frame metaphor, we suggest framing the ‘big picture’ using the four-sided parameters of opportunities and threats, vision and goals, constraints and imperatives, and strategies and capabilities.

A series of questions must generally be answered for each of these framing parameter groups, both at a fine-grain level for near-term actions and at a high level for longer-term considerations:

• Opportunities and threats: What changes are taking place in customer behaviour in respect of buying patterns and channel preferences? What are the unmet customer needs that are worth solving? What new products and services would be welcome by customers? What existing products and services should be modified or enhanced to make them relevant for the digital era? Given the current state of digital technologies, what product and service innovations can be targeted? What type of changes should be adopted in marketing products and services to digital customers?
• Vision and goals: What should the positioning of the company be during and after digital transformation? What short-term and long-term goals must be pursued to ensure transformation success? What should be the measures of success?
• Constraints and imperatives: What aspects of the current organisation could deter transformation progress? What should be done to overcome organisational roadblocks? What is the impact of prevailing rules and regulations on the activities and outcomes related to the intended transformation?
• Strategies and capabilities: Should the transformation be an aggregate of small changes or should it be a ‘leap-frog’ strategy? What should be the pace of the transformation? What type of business model is best suited to execute the digital mission? What is needed to adopt the required business model and to adapt necessary course-correction during the transformation? What existing assets are still relevant in digital business and what is the best way to leverage them? What capabilities must be acquired? What are the missing skills in the organisation that must be built up?

Framing captures a set of perspectives that is helpful for creating both guidance and focus. However, there is always a tendency to introduce personal bias based on an individual’s past experience and future outlook. The Harvard Business Essentials article mentioned earlier in this section provides a simple example of how an individual’s background impacts their point of view.

An example shows a common situation from the perspective of an immigrant from a poor country, an operations manager and an entrepreneur, all of whom are waiting in a long queue to be served by two service representatives in a post office. The immigrant is not bothered by the wait, as he sees two continuously working service representatives as a clear improvement on where he comes from. The operations manager ponders over the possibilities of task refinement. The entrepreneur starts to explore opportunities to create a higher-value postal service without long waits. In other words, the same situation leads to different individual reactions. One way to prevent personal bias from creeping into the framing of a company’s digital transformation challenge would be to iterate the frame from multiple perspectives using multiple personas.

A key component of the challenge of framing a digital transformation is to provide some notion of the appropriate business model, since this seriously affects how a company works both internally as well as with its ecosystem. An appropriate business model can be generated by using concepts such as the Business Model Canvas[2] and Digital Transformation Building Blocks.[3]

This topic is discussed in the ‘Modelling for Digital’[4] book. With answers to the relevant framing questions, a company leadership in charge of digital transformation is well equipped to properly frame (i.e., articulate) the digital transformation challenge. At this point it should be possible, for the intended digital transformation, to target customer needs and segments, paint an inspiring vision, set realistic end goals, identify key activities and milestones, communicate necessary organisational and business model changes, plan capability acquisition, install a governance model, and commit to meaningful transformation progress KPIs. However, as pointed out in the book ‘Leading Digital’,[5] for such a challenging framing exercise to really deliver ultimate value to all stakeholders, the leadership team must share the same awareness and urgency of the challenge, understand the details of how the transformation will be started, and grasp the same picture of the transformed organisation.

Finally, communication of the framed challenge to all stakeholders, both as the transformation is launched and as it evolves, is just as important as the framing exercise itself.