Why do I believe this?
Because CEOs are now realising that digital transformation requires a holistic approach and that culture and minsdet change is a key factor for success.
A 2018 Gartner survey reinforces this with an even greater recognition of this from CEOs whose companies have a digital initiative underway.
The survey revealed that CEOs now understand that making their culture more proactive, collaborative, innovative, empowered and customer-centric is what will drive success in digital.

For organisations looking to transform their business understanding the overarching narrative and stories around their Brand or product is critical.
Global companies such as Nike or Patagonia are masters at redefining narratives to differentiate their brands but also to create powerful societal change.
Whether you are a large or small organisation or an individual - the workshop gives you the tools to begin redefining a narrative and to create the powerful stories needed to drive a new narrative.

Participants enjoyed being challenged and gaining the power to be able to deconstruct narratives to drive businesses or cause-focused organisations and groups.

Reach out to know more about how you can leverage storytelling to enhance and accelerate transformation.

Exponential technology change is increasing rate that digital disruption impacts on business models and organisations.
Yet 80% of digital change programmes fail.
Find out how to avoid joining the club of failed digital transformations.
For many businesses just knowing where you are on the digital journey and what the next steps are is key.
We use a holistic benchmark to measure your business's digital capability and clearly show the pathway to your aspirational state.

Using the benchmarking we create a roadmap to link the current with future aspiration to deliver both digital enablers and digital Key Performance Indicators using design and delivery principles to de-risk your transformation.
A digital transformation is a marathon - but it's a marathon completed in many sprints.
But by taking a holistic view and using an iterative approach delivering on near-term quick wins organisations can start delivering customer - and internal - value faster, with lower risks.

The high percentage of digital transformation failures suggests that embarking on a digital transformation of an organisation is an almost impossible quest. 
Why do organisations that can afford to hire the best talent, buy platinum platforms and who are run by high-achieving leaders, fail at moving into the digital age?
Surely with the internet now reaching its fourth decade, organisations should be more than up to the task of being digital heroes?
Everyone loves a good hero-story - and for me digitally transforming is a hero-quest of the 21st Century for many organisations.
It can seem like an impossible journey to a magical location and like legendary quests such as The Odyssey, or my favourite, Lord of the Rings.

The quest always involves a heroic group who are given superpowers along the way and only reach their magical destination when they are truly transformed.​
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There are five key reasons why companies struggle to transform:

1. The company's reason for being is poorly translated into a brand purpose that really leverages (or even works) in a digital world.
2. The organisational culture is hierarchical, top-down. Everyone looks up for an answer.
3. The operating model is designed for the product manufacturing world. It has a strong middle-management layer who manage silos. Failure is career limiting, and therefore there is not place for risk taking and change is slow.
4. The business runs on an outdated, usually highly-customised technology platform. The focus of the transformation generally comes from this problem. It is a technology-driven mindset: "Once we have the platform, we can truly transform."
5. The organisation does not have a strong (or often any) capability in building good digital products. Products are built from the inside-out - rather than being properly validated with customers from the outside-in.

 ​While there is a hierarchy among these five factors I find it more useful to look at the five digital factors for success more as non-linear chapters in a transformational story - a kind of hero-quest.

Exponential technology change is increasing the rate that digital disruption is impacting on  business models and organisations.
The impact on businesses that are not born-digital can be highly problematic, as I have written about before.
For medium to smaller organisations the challenge can appear overwhelming - where on earth do you start and how do you avoid joining the club of failed digital transformations?
A useful way to clear away some of the noise is to begin by defining how businesses respond to digital - and what that means for their culture & people, operating model and infrastructure strategies.

In this model there are three strategic transformation choices to respond to digital:

1. Engage with an existing or new customer base through a digital distribution strategy. The channel is often siloed and run by a "digital department" and exists alongside other channels and often supported by manual processes.
2. Allow digital to drive simplification and automation of the core business which in turn creates highly innovative customer experiences and Brand differentiation. Air New Zealand has been a digital pioneer in the airline industry and aspires to be leading digital airline globally.
3. Digital drives the business strategy. These are digital businesses where they operate a business strategy for a digital world, as opposed to a digital sub-strategy. Organisations currently succeeding in this have primarily been blessed by being born-digital and taking a tech company approach to previously non-digital markets, like Xero with accounting and Trade Me in marketplace and classified advertising, But the reality for businesses over the next decade is that to grow and thrive in a digital world they will need to transform into a digital business.