Culture, Brand and Drive are tightly interconnected, and for each there are enablers and blockers. 

Look first at Digital Culture. Corporate culture is visible at all times. From the outside and from the inside. There are three elements to cultural markers: What symbols can be seen? What systems are in use? What behaviours are driving this company? Or in other words: On what does this company spend time and money? What is promoted? Where are the company’s heroes and what is their job?

Digital is not an ‘outside’ buzzword. Digital can equally be experienced in the back office. 

What can be done digitally will be done digitally – regardless of whether it is transparent to the customer or it is abandoning analogue in the back office. Digital is becoming part of the corporate DNA rather than being a ‘project’.

So, when you put your business model to work in a digital marketplace, it influences the whole value chain. It is not a new website, it is an online shopping mall, it is not an online shopping mall, but the digital service centre behind it, it is not only about the service department, it is about digitised stock management, and so on and so forth.

If the analogue mindset is in power and blocking, it will be almost impossible to make a smooth transition to the digital world. 

Digital is strongly linked to corporate behaviours. Digital links with agile process, creativity and strong collaboration found in flat hierarchies. If analogue behaviours persist, the processes to become digitalised are lost. Every rupture in your digitalised value chain will be a major obstacle. It starts with your staff having been trained and become successful in analogue value chains. How can you get them excited about the changes ahead?

Digitalisation transforms people interaction, idea development, processes and customer interaction

Let’s look at Digital Drive next. A company is driven by people. And people are driven by three major elements:

• Purpose: Why am I here? How can I link my personal values and convictions to the corporate strategy? What is my contribution to a big idea? How can I contribute to taking my company into the digital age?
• Mastery: What can I learn? How as an employee can I develop my knowledge and how can I acquire additional skills needed to speed up the digital revolution?
• Autonomy: What is my level of influence? What is my area of responsibility? Can I take decisions that help make digital a reality?

People, not technology, decide a digital transformation’s success

How do we enable the digital drive? Excellence is you being able to make an emotional link and weaving a convincing story between your digital strategy and the employee. Giving your employee a clear purpose whatever their level, function or position. Giving learning opportunities and being open to new ideas will free the power needed for a successful transformation. So, make use of idea collection methods and create collaborative spaces. Implement regular idea hackathons and reward new business ideas even though they may seem disruptive.

There are blockers to avoid. Command and control is a killer for a self-propelling digital transformation. Taking away the power of bottom-up ideas is damaging. Preventing employees from taking action unless given permission is even worse. If digital is seen as a process optimisation tool and not as a means to reinvent business models, you will certainly miss most of the opportunities digital transformation can offer. 

Brand can be the lifeblood of any change. The brand is all about the WHY. of your digital initiative. Forget advertising and smart talking. Forget about what you are doing and how you will accomplish your mission. Focus on the reason for your business’s existence. How is your business changing the world? Can you capture it in an inspiring statement that is understood by every stakeholder? Do you bring a story to it that you can amplify in a way that it is heard by all employees and followed by your customers? 

One mission, one story, one voice. 

This sounds stupidly simple and very difficult at the same time. Getting your Executive Board to sing from the same song sheet everywhere throughout the company will be a crucial asset in making change happen. The simpler and more emotional the message around digital transformation, the better. Branding at the end of the day should generate a positive customer experience – although positive employee experience is the starting point for every customer experience in the first place, whether a business is digital or analogue.

We can look at Netflix as a best practice example. Netflix was founded in 1997 as a DVD movie rental business. In 2005, 35,000 different film titles were available. Then the business had to go digital or die. So Netflix introduced video on demand. Today, Netflix has 89 million customers around the globe and over 3,000 employees. So, what is the secret sauce that skyrocketed their business model? The Netflix agility is driven by its culture of freedom and responsibility. The basis is a value-oriented leadership model accepting no excuses. It is the way that values are respected, demonstrated and materialised that makes the difference. At Netflix the belief is that responsible people thrive on freedom and are worthy of freedom. Creativity and self-discipline as well as freedom and responsibility are closely linked. There is one policy: ‘Act in Netflix’s best interest.’ Providing insight, transparency and strategic context to all employees is crucial for Netflix. The fuel for success lies in the corporate philosophy and its manifold visible and invisible touchpoint for every employee. In that sense, Netflix is a wonderful example of how culture is driving people and therefore propelling a successful global brand.