The digital transformation slow lane

Three reasons why your digital transformation is moving slower than Edsa traffic and how to fix it with behavioral science

For many CEOs in top Southeast Asian organizations, digital transformation can feel as sluggish as navigating Edsa’s infamous traffic. Despite investing in top-tier technologies, progress stalls due to three barriers: weak links with key business results, a fragile business case, and a lack of perceived usefulness and ease of use. Applying behavioral science can help overcome these challenges and drive digital transformation.

Loose links among technology, key business results and behavior change

The weak connection between digital initiatives and organizational key results is a burning issue. Technology is often deployed without clearly mapping how it will achieve desired outcomes. This disconnect leads to misaligned priorities and wasted resources.

Technology adoption and key results are also loosely linked to behavior change, even if we know they won’t happen without behavior change.

Develop a comprehensive strategy that ties each technology-related activity to your key results and translates key results to the required employee and customer behavior change programs. These two steps will hasten your transformation.

A weak business case

The inadequacy of the business case is another stumbling block, especially when the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t justify the transformation due to a faulty evaluation. Many people aren’t familiar with the analysis or don’t want to do the work required to analyze the factors affecting related costs and benefits.

Productivity gains, errors avoided, unclogged bottlenecks, information visibility, freed-up resources and all their ripple effects end up missing from the cost-benefit story.

Decision makers also forget that not everything that matters can be accurately measured, e.g., the financial benefits of avoided errors and unaccounted ripple effects of digitalization, similar to the impact on purchase of mental availability and associations with a brand.

Low perceived usefulness and ease of use

Digitalization proponents frequently assume that the usefulness and ease of use of new technologies are self-evident. This assumption overlooks the human element in technology adoption. Counter that perception with social proof. Highlight success stories and support adoption champions.

Design quick-start guides tailored to specific use cases that ease the transition. Set continuous feedback and iterative improvement protocols to ensure technologies support the employee adoption journey and organizational value creation.

A behavioral approach to a people problem

Behavioral science excels at mapping the behavioral journey of digital transformation. By diagnosing physical, contextual and psychological challenges, this scientific approach helps design targeted interventions that remove barriers and reinforce enablers.

Here are five practical behavioral science tips to move to the fast lane of technology-powered transformation.

1. Provide guidance for mapping specific digital transformation activities with key results, and your key results with behavior change programs.

2. Offer templates for incorporating hard-to-quantify and qualitative benefits into the cost-benefit story.

3. Release quick-start, use case-specific cheat sheets, prompts and defaults to apply technologies to the jobs people are trying to do.

4. Establish a protocol for iterative feedback and improvement within the technology adoption process.

5. Create social proof of usefulness, ease of use and success with emphasis on the right messengers. Highlight success stories from similar organizations and use peer champions for usefulness and ease of use.

Digital transformation goes beyond technology and financing. If you want to hear about breaking the barriers to transformative digitalization, meet me at the MAP NextGen CEO Conference, Shangri-La The Fort, Taguig, on Nov. 8, 2 p.m. I’ll share my experiences as a behavioral scientist and technologist. If you’re interested in hearing about the digital journey of PAL, KonsultaMD and Bayad Center, their CEOs will be on a panel.

Business permitting is also getting a facelift for digitalization. The person driving this in Parañaque City will share her experiences. If data monetization is your thing, catch the fireside with Erika Fille Legara (Center for AI Research), Xavier Marzan (Embiggen Ventures) and Mel Valerio (Maya). Anti-Red Tape Authority Secretary Ernesto Perez will talk about their digitalization programs. We will cap off the day next-gen style with speed networking and an open bar. See you there! INQ

Register at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfS2UaW0QeNF35-bDHXWDaNKVGUsenEwBcnAAvs3SkgnOr0dQ/viewform

This article reflects the personal opinion of the author and not the official stand of the Management Association of the Philippines or MAP. The author is a behavioral strategist, technologist and author. He is the CEO of BS Works and chair of the MAP NextGen Committee, NextGen Conference and NextGen Leadership Program. Feedback at [email protected] or [email protected].