How To Make Digital Transformation A Priority

Mid-February brought the visually-engaging, coffee-table-styled book, Fast Times: How Digital Winners Set Direction, Learn, and Adapt, written for senior executives who are frustrated by the slow pace and limited return on investment (ROI) of their digital transformation, and are unsure what’s holding them back. 

Fast Times is written by four authors, reflecting on their personal experiences leading dozens of top global digital companies across all sectors. They share their expertise in a conversational style, delivering practical, actionable business guidance.

“This book is for leaders at companies where digital transformation is a top-three priority,” explain authors Arun Arora, Peter Dahlstrom, Klemens Hjartar, and Florian Wunderlich. 

These authors share that digital winners focus on:

• Balancing fast execution with deliberate direction-setting
• Developing systems so that knowledge is shared not siloed.
• Building a culture of continuous and practical learning.
• Anticipating the most common speed bumps and addressing them early.
• Making it safe for people to experiment.
• Understanding how people actually behave when faced with change and helping them succeed.
• Pulling out all the stops to get the digital stars they need and making sure their recruiting promises match up to reality. 

Recently, the authors answered these questions:

Question: What does it mean to be fast in the digital age? 

The Authors: We know that change will be never be this slow again. To win in this world, you have to be first. To be first, you have to be fast. But to be fast, you have to be smart. That last part is critical. Lots of transformations fail because incumbent companies mistake activity for speed. Unless that activity is advancing a carefully crafted strategy, the company is apt to sprint off in the wrong direction. 

To achieve what we call digital velocity—the ability to set direction, learn, and adapt—companies have to know when to take it slow and chart a deliberate path and when to go flat out. 

We know of one European energy company that saw a lucrative opportunity for a new line of business. They knew the opportunity wouldn’t last and were ready to hire an outside vendor to get the capabilities they needed fast. Luckily, they hit the pause button before diving in. After really studying the challenge, they decided to take the time to develop their own systems. Today, they’re a leader in their new field, but the CEO says they would never have gotten there if they had followed their first instincts.  

Question: How can companies go from saying it’s safe to fail to actually instilling this belief in their employees so that risk aversion doesn’t rule their actions? 

The Authors: The best performing digital companies actually reward the right kind of failure. They understand that even expensive efforts that fail are actually investments in future successes. 

A good leader takes responsibility for the things that don’t work and shares the credit generously for the things that do. A really good leader makes sure the entire team learns as much as possible from the failures, extracting maximum value from the experience. 

Consider the case of a large tech company that suffered a very big and embarrassing failure of a new product. The CEO got out front and immediately apologized for the offense. But he also recognized another risk: that the team responsible would pull back and become too risk averse. He emailed them right away, urging them to avoid regret and to make sure they learned as much as possible from what went wrong. 

Another CEO we know makes failure part of the review process, asking executives to describe recent failures. If they aren’t big enough, the executive isn’t taking big enough risks—and may fail to get a bonus. Our research shows that the fastest growing companies are more apt than lower performing companies to approach failure as a learning opportunity rather than an occasion for blame.  

Question: What else do companies need to do to build a learning culture?  

The Authors: What many leaders often miss is that culture doesn’t just happen; it’s the product of actions and initiatives that can be deliberately implemented, tracked, and adjusted. But it’s very hard to make that work if leaders themselves aren’t willing to change and embrace a learning culture. That includes rewarding failure, as we’ve discussed, so that people develop the confidence to experiment and learn. But it also includes a real humility on the part of leaders and an openness to learning from others – whether that’s walking through agile working labs and asking people what they’re doing to visiting companies to understand how they operate to simply reading interesting books. Learning isn’t just about self-improvement; it’s about survival, and the best learners are going to be in the best position to win.  

All four authors are partners or senior partners at McKinsey & Company. Arora has held various operational and leadership positions with Apple, Sun Microsystems, 3M Groupon, and Staples. He is based in Paris. Dahlstrom, based in London, is the global leader for McKinsey Digital’s B2C team. Hjartar is global leader of McKinsey Digital in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors and in Western Europe. He is based in Copenhagen. Wunderlich, based in Germany, is a cofounder of Leap by McKinsey, which helps large enterprises build new businesses. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.