5 surefire ways to derail a digital transformation (without knowing it)

CIOs invest in skills development, and HR usually offers leadership development programs, but these approaches often don’t address the knowledge and skills needed to lead digital transformation initiatives.

Digital trailblazers, including product managers, program managers, architects, agile delivery managers, and data scientists, need specialized learning programs and coaching to build their confidence in handling transformation responsibilities. Derailments can happen when transformation leaders seize up when negotiating priorities, fail to facilitate decisions on requirements, or struggle when handling conflicts or blow-up moments. Digital trailblazers face many people challenges when guiding employees through a transformation, and CIOs should identify coaches and development programs to prepare their leaders.

5. Drive KPIs and data-driven decisions without a data strategy

Building digital products, improving customer experiences, developing the future of work, and encouraging a data-driven culture are all common digital transformation themes. Leaders should define new KPIs and OKRs that help people understand the objectives and recognize how their work contributes to the organization’s transformation goals.

But there are common pitfalls, such as selecting the wrong KPIs, monitoring too many metrics, or not addressing poor data quality. “Having bad data, or an inability to realize the value and take action from data, is a surefire way for a digital transformation project to go south quickly, says Dwaine Plauche, senior manager of product marketing at AspenTech. “Without useful, contextual data that can be scaled and used throughout the organization, digital transformation efforts may simply become one-off  projects that get stalled at the pilot phase, leading C-suite leaders to believe the technology was a failure or the investment was a waste.”

This derailment stems from having no defined data strategy or having one not aligned with digital transformation objectives.

Consider how it looks to nontechnical executives when every digital transformation initiative has customized dashboards, different KPIs, and metrics with underlying data quality issues. Instead of initiatives telling a cohesive story, it leaves results open to interpretation and challenges. The data strategy should include guidelines on the types of KPIs, standards for dashboarding metrics, and responsibilities for improving data quality.

The five derailments I focus on here fall within the CIO’s responsibilities to address. They are important for CIOs leading multiple transformation initiatives to deliver against several business strategies. The practices that worked when digital transformations started small with one initiative must evolve into a digital culture and a transformation operating model. It’s in this transition where increasing derailments can lead to digital transformation failures.