Digital transformation in the corporate world is about courage

There is not one day where I don’t see a post worshipping entrepreneurs.

People who didn’t hesitate to aim for hardship, uncertainty, take risks, all that to steer their business in total freedom, achieve great independent success or even sometimes in order to build a better world. We write books about them, we make movies… and undoubtedly the track record of some of these people is really impressive and beyond imagination. I’d personally love to meet quite a few of them in real life.

Why join the navy when you can be a pirate, isn’t it?

But some days, the worshipping gets so strong, I get the feeling that the general mindset is that those who choose to remain in the corporate world are just losers or people who can’t do anything better of their life (OK it’s not *that* bad… but you have to admit it is patronizing sometimes)

For having spent time in both worlds, as an employee and now owning my business, I remain pretty much impressed by my former colleagues’ work and regularly look up to their achievements.  Working in Corporate environments requires a lot of skill and dedication – you choose to work for someone else, in a setup you are only a part of, with co-workers on which you depend on to get results, aiming to make things happen on a great scale. You are part of a system, in which you are a key element to ensure business continuity and you are there to bring growth.  You don’t choose to move to a small boat facing danger but progressing swiftly, you choose to stay on a boat hard to steer to make it move to achieve strong results. And that by itself is already a challenge.

And since a few years, this challenge has grown tremendously. What were often steady businesses are now facing disruption, requiring transformation, changes of systems and processes that were designed to sustain businesses steadily and not shift dramatically. So all these people do not only have to manage their day-to-day work, keep operations and revenue coming in, but on top need to deal with the transformation occurring in their company (and we do agree that more often than not, you have to do all this change stuff on top of your regular work, which was already a lot by itself). So as much as entrepreneurship, working and bringing results in a corporate world, is a huge challenge and should be applauded equally.

And among those corporates, I have to admit I am particularly impressed by a specific group : those who provoke and trigger that change – specifically people in charge of Digital Transformation.

Digital Transformation requires from people to engage all the others in this new story – it requires the ability to lead, collaborate, communicate, be inventive and dare to fail etc… there are countless posts listing all the great skills you need to master to succesfully manage transformation. Soft skills undoubtedly necessary to get the job done.

What we don’t often say, or not openly enough, is that Digital Transformation in the corporate world requires Courage.

Courage to voice problems,
Courage to bring on the table taboo topics,
Courage to challenge the way customers are perceived and treated,
Courage to contradict hierarchy which can have a wrong understanding of what digital transformation really takes,
Courage to voice when multi-year plans that can be oh-so-reassuring for organizations are going to fail or be unsufficient,
And so much more.

When Digital Transformation becomes your responsibility in your job, a job on which you depend to make a living, you must go against all these practices, perceptions and attitudes requiring your organization to change. You frustrate people, you create fear and misunderstanding at all levels of the organization (including at top management that doesn’t always the extent of what needs to be changed and is not always ready to change themselves). And when you disturb so much, it is possible that a fellow collaborator will take the opportunity of a failure to put you in a difficult situation, and you might even lose your job.

Leadership, a compelling vision do help and are very important to onboard a maximum of people, earn collaboration and diminish reluctance to change. But not all digital transformation plans are lucky enough to be able to boast greater good for customers or the world – a lot are fueled to maintain competitivity in harsh marketplaces – and that is a tough position to defend.

And yes, the blessing of the CEO giving you the mandate to “turn all the tables in order to get there” does bring comfort – but at the end of the day, when you are in meetings defending difficult positions, pushing for some practices, blocking colleagues’ projects, hinting at situations which will require a reshuffling of the organization – or even worse : a restructuration – you are in a harsh situation and more often than not, you are all by yourself. 

So please let’s not forget courage.

About the author

Audrey has been managing digital strategy and digital transformations during several years from within large corporations before creating Belly & Brain.

By creating Belly & Brain, her aim was to design a consultancy firm finally adapted to the needs and reality of business leaders confronted to strong digital challenges - combining consultancy and coaching capabilities able to handle as well marketing and sales strategic questions, as well as change management, organisational & culture challenges needed to actually deliver on the transformation.

Audrey organises regular free meet up sessions with executives to discuss their challenges and give rapid feedback on solutions and options. Learn more about these here