What does Digital Excellence mean to you?
I recently shared the journey to Transfit discovering our Why. You can read about that here, but in short Transfit's "Why" is the championing of Digital Excellence within the ICT industry.
One of the first undertakings of our Digital Excellence Framework is to conduct a baseline Digital / ICT Excellence Assessment for our clients. These are conducted by interviewing or surveying representatives from management and staff, of all seniority, across the business.
In this engagement, the first question we ask is "What does Digital Excellence mean to you". Pleasingly, most respondents have a pretty clear idea in their minds as to what this means, with their answers covering most of the practices, principles, methodologies, and structures that we consider crucial to achieving the Digital Excellence benchmark, but more on that shortly.
More worrying is the response to the second questions which is "Based on your definition of Digital Excellence, where have you seen this practiced, or the closest thing you can recall". On average 80% of respondents can't name one organisation that they consider has a Digital Excellence culture. The remaining 20%, when pressed, can find some examples although these are usually point in time or project specific instances, not enduring and organisational wide.
So why is this?
If I asked the same question about the sports industry, most of us could rattle off several individuals or clubs globally who consistently demonstrate Excellence in their operations, regardless of their on field performance. Likewise, if I asked about Chefs or Entertainers or even other areas of Engineering endeavour. So why is Excellence in ICT so elusive?
It's not like we haven't had time to perfect the craft, so what's holding us back?
To begin to answer this we need to go back to our first question, "What does Digital Excellence mean to you?" We have our list but before I share that, I would like your opinions. Please reply to this thread with the top three or four things that define Digital Excellence for you. Ok, to help get you started, here are three from our list, randomly selected:
A Clear & Implementable Digital / ICT Strategy
Work from Anywhere
Accept Change, Fail Fast.
I look forward to your replies and to continuing to unpack this significant issue. Of course, please reach out if you would like us to conduct a Digital Excellence assessment for your organisations.