Digital is (only) information – but immediately and everywhere, and that is what is new about it. Far from the fantasies the sector generates, it is more than an acceleration: it is potentially a paradigm shift. And at least a change of practices, in the distribution of roles.
Digital fascinates, to the point of becoming a fantasy for some – in at least two ways.
The fantasy of easy wealth
The digital sector and its start-ups, necessarily “digital”, have become the new fantasies of “easy” wealth, with the huge market capitalisations of a few companies. The “financial geniuses” have been succeeded by “digital geniuses”, the golden boys by hippie-geeks: each era has its figureheads… And in large companies, the authority of the CFO, who held the purse strings, is being challenged by the arrival of the CDO, who knows the map of treasure island.
One of the underlying problems is that the digital start-up model has become, for many, synonymous with getting rich quick. The goal, admitted or not, seems less to create value and jobs than to launch a product which – mature or not, but always enticing – will be bought for hard cash, often by a giant keen to absorb emerging competitors. Or else by a “classic” large company convinced that swallowing this “magic pill” will give it the same qualities. Fantasy…
And the fantasy of immaterial work
The end of the 20th century saw the accelerated advent – at least in people’s minds – of the service sector. Business schools or the senior civil service (and sometimes both…) were then the targets of top students. As for engineers, they aimed for finance roles, also synonymous with immaterial work. Today, digital technology allows this fantastical quest for “intelligent” work – since dematerialised – to continue: a still-pervasive avatar of a perceived hierarchy between “intellectual” and “material” functions, a Cartesian utopia of the mind’s proud mastery over the physical world. “Descartes, useless and uncertain”…
The main problem with this fantasy, besides completely denying the diversity of human skills, is that it neglects – and often despises – the material dimensions of wealth creation. But without roads, cars or trains, what use will the “apps” that make travel easier be? You don’t travel on a smartphone! And how will we exchange information instantly when we have neither the skills nor the means to build machines and phones and all the “connected objects”? And how will we manufacture electronic components – the very physical supports of these immaterial exchanges – when we no longer have access to rare earths? Fantasies are not “real life”.
From “greenwashing” to “digital painting”?
Playing on this double fantasy, many organisations dress up their classic policies and give their products a makeover.
The 2000s were the decade of “greenwashing”; the next may be, simply and for some, that of “digital painting”. With, at best, a “digital acceleration”: more of the same, but faster and more easily. Which is already something, mind you.
In marketing, for example, the massive and rapid dissemination of information makes it possible to get as close as possible to consumers, with messages right on their phone or watch, and to know their habits more precisely thanks to the information they give away, knowingly or not. By combining these upward and downward flows, the sales message can be personalised for greater effectiveness – consumers, after all, are never more interested than when you talk to them about themselves…
And in industry, big data and connected objects make it possible to get to the very heart of the manufacturing process, sometimes into the heart of matter itself, allowing real-time monitoring or even control – whether to check quality or even, with 3D manufacturing, to organise the assembly of particles, already at molecular level.
The added value of digital acceleration is undeniable. But it merely raises again the age-old question of the value of information, and of how it translates into a world that has so far been hierarchical, centralised and monopolistic. “Information is power”. So?
Today, formal organisations, public and private, are fundamentally challenged by the digitisation of information and its easy dissemination, within everyone’s reach, as long as they have the tools (phones, computers…) and the necessary infrastructure (cables, relay stations, satellites…).
For companies, the challenge of letting go
For “traditional” companies, the reflection to be undertaken is similar.
Digital transformation means asking what place information has in their value creation, and whether they are able to exploit it themselves, to outsource it or – an interesting new avenue – to co-source it.
If information is merely a means serving their production, “acceleration” is enough: they will keep producing the same thing, but with other, more modern tools. But if information is at the heart of value creation, or if it represents a significant “growth lever”, simple acceleration will not be enough to cope with the speed of pure players and their ability to mobilise resources, alone or with challengers.
The ability to succeed in digital transformation depends on three interlinked factors.
First, an organisational dimension. Depending on their size and culture, companies are governed by more or less bureaucratic ways of working. Whether to control the risks of large-scale operations or, more prosaically, to justify the existence of organisational layers, all organisations put “control” mechanisms in place.
With digital transformation – even in its mere “acceleration” form – control mechanisms are counter-productive: loss of time and agility, disempowerment of unorthodox but driving actors, inability to innovate by thinking outside the box… This organisational obstacle should not be underestimated. Digital is information; but if information cannot circulate easily within the organisation to enable projects to be carried out, it is a lost cause. Because whatever a company leader’s determination to embark on a real “transformation”, the organisational infrastructure often sees to it that implementation fails.
The human dimension is the second condition for success. Digital professions require new skills, which cannot simply be outsourced and “managed”. These skills are both know-how and interpersonal skills: technical, but also relational.
Digital transformation is also a transformation of behaviours, practices, ways of relating – and therefore of management. And when companies reassure themselves by asserting the volatility of generations X, Y or Z, they are only denying their own inability to transform. “Digital natives” are not fundamentally unstable or disengaged. On the other hand, when they have not chosen the French civil service for job security, they flee companies that remain stuck in ways of working “from the last century” – often those of their leaders.
Digital is information. Digital transformation is therefore also the ability to create, transmit, share and use information. Information must no longer be seen as an attribute of power, but as a key ingredient of value creation. And one does not create value alone, or by locking it in a safe.
From chain to network: a paradigm shift
The “cultural” dimension is the third condition for success, and it cuts across the first two, since culture is expressed both in (organisational) ways of working and in (human) practices.
And as far as “culture” is concerned, digital transformation demands a real paradigm shift. Because while Taylorism, even in its most recent (post- or neo-) version, can be illustrated by a value chain to be “optimised”, the vector of information is the network.
So ways of working and practices born of a century of Taylorism are deeply unsuited. One no longer thinks in terms of structuring but of emergence, not of roll-out but of opportunities. These are no longer “methods” but “principles of action”. One no longer shares objectives, always outdated or unsuitable, but a meaning, a common project. And engineering draws on the principles of humility and Popperian realism (“piecemeal engineering”). Finally, “leadership” is neither authoritarian nor benevolent; it is above all post-heroic and shared.
These transformations run deep; they touch the identity of the company and its staff.
Changing organisations, adapting people and transforming culture are three heavy, difficult undertakings, sources of effort and disappointment. But these paradigm shifts can lead to major successes – and quite simply to survival.
From monolithic companies to ad hoc coalitions
Nevertheless, companies facing this challenge also have a scenario other than deep transformation. Less intellectually “glorious”, certainly, but less risky. That of partnership, of co-construction.
Moving away from a logic of domination and monopoly, organisations in the digital age are – like the information that is their stock-in-trade – networks and ad hoc coalitions. With light, adaptive centres of expertise, and “force pools” for implementation. At individual level, independent professionals have in fact paved the way, so as to take part in ad hoc value creation, built on demand. They are not “precarious” workers; they are the future.
So companies that would not or could not face a real digital transformation will nonetheless have to succeed in an important change: opening up and giving up power. Absorbing a start-up will make its founder rich but will kill its spirit and value. On the other hand, a fair distribution of contributions and added value will guarantee everyone’s success. But accepting this is also a real transformation challenge.
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