PMI Global Insights

The first success variable in The Digital Transformation Success Formula is individual transformation. Countless sources are predicting the disappearance and / or displacement of jobs. But for as long as we exist as humans, we will still need each other's. What if losing jobs was the way we could resolve disengagement and be transformed to a greater state of authenticity that leads to better innovations and happiness?

We have developed a professional mindset in conformance with a few stereotypes of the professional life. It is a mindset that often separates who we really are to show just a small part of us that the business world expects to see. We were programmed this way from our earliest upbringing and later through the corporate world-structure and mindset even more. However, the truth is that the motor that powers our professional life is our individuality, our authenticity.

While our individual programming allows us to reproduce the professional pattern without much effort, this restrained professional mindset limits our potential. For many of us, key personal values like aspiration and dreams are often well outside of this professional patterns, which is an identity that we spend most of our awake time at work.  Have you ever noticed how some boldly authentic posts may attract attention on LinkedIn while a few people suggest that Facebook should be used for such posts instead?

Our individual values, passions, interests, and aspirations are the regulators of our energy. When we stay close to or within their influence, we experience the greatest level of energy, positivity, and happiness. The more we move away from them, the less positive energy and consciousness we experience. As a result, the person lacks authenticity and is operating like a robot on autopilot and barely using his / her brain. This is the complete opposite of someone that is mindful and alert.

Our organizations are filled with these robot-like individuals, conditioned to repeat procedures mindlessly. When a change is announced, these are the individuals who resist the changes the most, all while being disengaged.  Double the issues!

Employee disengagement is the biggest challenge that organizations around the world face today. But, these organizations created or contributed to such situations as well. Starting at recruitment, many HR departments already have their restrained criteria established, like a box to fit employees, and then the employees do their best to fit in the box to get the job.  While this is a way to standardize an organization, it is an approach that restrains creativity and authenticity.

Can an individual be that great without authenticity? Brain science and neuroplasticity reveals otherwise. The statistics about global employee engagement, which is down to 13% according to Gallup, proves this. With digital transformation, we have the opportunity to empower our people to release their fears, find their inner values and passions so they can embrace them. As a result, they will become mission-driven and innovate in their professions. Creativity and authenticity are much needed today to increase innovation in our businesses and organizations. Losing jobs but gaining mission can be a great solution to disengagement.

I encourage every leader to embrace their authenticity by engaging in self-transformation so that they inspire their organizations to do so as well. This is the best way we can turn around disengagement and create organizations with individuals on missions, who are energized, happier and productive in the digital age. Many disengaged individuals will at this point release themselves from jobs that they are tied to but dislike, and are wasting both their resources and that of their organizations, to embrace their individual missions, which may be another position, another view of their contribution, or else, with great enthusiasm. As a result, the mission-driven workforce will transform our organizations to experience more business innovation and success. Everyone will experience greater individual happiness.

If you are a digital transformation leader, I invite you to join my mastermind coaching program, Leaders on a Digital Mission here.

Find out more about my book The Digital Transformation Success Formula here.

Your coach in transformation,

Nadia Vincent

The digital era is the time for inspiring and impactful leaders. We are no longer in a time where only the top manager commands, and everyone obeys or follows regardless anymore. Therefore your organization expects you to inspire them and make a positive impact in their organization and their future. Otherwise, you may quickly lose your shirt and more in this volatile market. 

You’ll need real support from experienced leaders and facilitators while personalizing things for your business and most importantly, taking action. You position calls for a truly evolved and transformed person with a harmonious blend of skills and a broad personality. You are one of the brand new inspiring and insightful leaders of the digital age: you are a Digital Transformation Leader.

Therefore, being a Digital Transformation Leader who wants to live up to the highest expectations, here are 10 rules to act on so that you can succeed in your mission.

1. Don’t look to please everyone but set to inspire everyone to be transformed.
2. Understand that your people do not want the changes but they want the rewarding transformation.
3. Do not force them to accept change, for you won’t experience success this way, rather you can lead them to embrace the changes themselves and succeed together.
4. Never fire anyone, but instead release individuals from their end-of-cycle positions, and sometimes reassign them.
5.  Don’t be responsible for everyone’s individual happiness but for the business performance and sustainability. On the other hand, create an environment that promotes individual happiness, performance improvement and therefore organizational success.
6. Invest in the best digital technologies for your business, without relying too much on the technology but making the business the true driver.
7. Invest as much in people as you invest in digital technology, because as rewarding as it can be investing in technology, investing in people is even more rewarding for your organization both in the short and the long term.
8. Start the digital transformation with your personal transformation first, because you will be shaping the future of your organization and it will be a reflection of your mindset.
9. Create the best leadership support team that you can, because you can’t do it alone.
10. Innovate and leverage the organization, customers and prospects innovative potential.

To support you and help you live to your organization’s expectations, I make it my commitment for you to succeed personally, professionally and holistically.

Join our community that is a place for coaching, exchanging, and creating more transformed and successful leaders.

Attending the PMI Global congress in San Diego?  You can schedule an individual session with me in the “Ask An Expert” sessions and meet me in the Solutions Center (exhibit hall). Book your session here.

Are you leading one or more digital transformation projects? Be ready to embrace a new type of project management with more change-based leadership and individual transformation involvement than you have before.

1. You must move from the traditional project management triangle and adopt the new rectangle for the project involving change and transformation leadership.

   Digital transformation is not about one change but multiple changes that will    create the transformation. Your most effective management of time, cost        and scope can easily be sabotaged by disengaged individuals, making you      look like a novice.

2. Your team now extends beyond your traditional stakeholders in terms of your competitors, influencers, your clients, their kids, their friends and their little knuckle-head friend on Facebook.

    Digital transformation is about innovation and business efficiency.           Innovative ideas are born out of people’s experience, whoever they are. We have moved to a social era where social media trends, shares, and happenings shape our reality and possibilities. You get to use that as an extended resource.

3. You must and should go ahead and find out about the plan of other leaders in your organization, and it’s necessary to keep an eye on what they are doing.

With the many changes happening in different parts of your organization besides business-as-usual, expect any other ongoing plan to change at any time, impacted by the market, or whatever other factors. You don’t want to be aware of it last or after finding out how it impacted your agreed deliveries negatively. Also change in other part of your organization can impact positively your strategic plan, giving you leverage that you did not have to start with.

4. Don’t even think of complaining about your plan changing too often. Consider it the standard way. Like in point 3 above, be ready to change your plan, adjust it or reinvent it at any time. Your plan was one of the possible alternatives and should be adopted after proper strategic planning. At the same time, great strategic planning will allow you to choose another previously spotted possibility or to create one from nothing.

5. The vision is not only for the top executives, as project managers must own the vision as well whether you created it or not. Otherwise you may get sidetracked as you implement changes indefinitely. When you don’t own the vision, it is difficult to engage your team and lead them successfully. Engaging your team gives you the dynamic to create digital transformation successes!

6. Whether your title has “digital transformation” in it or not, most change and transformation projects in organizations today are related to digital transformation.

    That is because digital transformation is not about the technology itself but about improving the business so that it prospers in the digital age. The technology is used as support for making the transformation happen, but the deeper transformation is to be created and maintained by people. When the people experience / leadership aspect is neglected, the organization may get lost in implementing changes and turning in a circle but never evolving. It will be as such until the organization changes its approach or until it can’t survive anymore, and there happens a type of business cannibalization.

Attending the PMI Global congress in San Diego?  You can schedule an individual session with me in the “Ask an Expert” sessions and meet me in the Solutions Center (exhibit hall). Book your session here!

Join our community of Digital Transformation Leaders here and download the digital transformation report.