Embracing the uncomfortable epiphany
Why being wrong is part of digital transformation, and what to do when it happens
Everyone says that digital transformation is hard, and that it is messy. It’s a truth that is acknowledged, but only kind of.
Companies seeking to fundamentally change how they operate to remain competitive amid the rapid advances in technology can usually accept that they are behind the curve. However, they have to envision digital transformation as a straight line to where they need to go. Employees need to back the initiative and do the groundwork to make it happen. Sponsors (and for public companies, shareholders) need to fund it.
There may be talk of leapfrogging, of taking advantage of best practice established by others as a shortcut to business results. Perhaps there will even be some acknowledgement that iteration and experimentation will be needed. This is usually imagined as a gentle process of optimising through the new suite of testing tools that the team will shortly have at their disposal.
What’s harder to accept is the scale of the unknowns, and the impossibility of anticipating everything perfectly. If those first few steps towards transformation falter, and the business results don’t immediately materialise, the path to this hopeful future suddenly doesn’t look so clear. The pressure ratchets up. How can the first launch be floundering, when we thought it was a sure-fire winner? Wasn’t this supposed to solve all our problems, not create new ones?
This is a key moment, and one that can either strengthen a business’s commitment to transformation or irrevocably lose its confidence. If you can’t address the issues quickly, expect the questions to become more pointed: Why are we even doing this? Were we actually better off before?
If it becomes clear that the approach that we started out with actually isn’t going to deliver the outcomes we need, we need to adjust while keeping teams and sponsors on side. Acknowledging when we have got something wrong makes us feel vulnerable, particularly when things aren’t going well. However, it is only by recognising the gap between what we thought we knew and what have since come to know that we become empowered to act from a place of deeper knowledge.
Can we avoid being wrong?
We want to believe, as we do our upfront analysis, that we have mapped all of the risks, issues, and mitigations, and that there are no lurking surprises. Unfortunately, while being thorough is essential, it isn’t always enough.
Digital transformation generally takes place in larger, established companies. That means a complex environment, often with legacy systems, data of variable quality that has accumulated in multiple places over the years, and different teams working with limited visibility of each other. It may be a real challenge to get even an accurate view of customer numbers or conversion rates because data isn’t joined up enough. You may hear dozens of conflicting things about a how a certain system or process works, or find that the tacit, unspoken knowledge in people’s heads is entirely at odds with what has been documented. You may surface some of this before you launch a new product, but if you don’t foresee everything, the launch still may not go as planned.
Here are some potential gotchas:
When offline processes are digitised or automated, it can expose a gap between what the business believes is happening and actual day-to-day operations. If a lack of psychological safety prevents front-line teams from being fully honest during the design and implementation, you will be building for a reality that doesn’t exist.
Legacy data (e.g. duplicate records, missing fields) may cause unexpected outcomes if this isn’t surfaced during the testing process. There may be a lot of scenarios that require special handling that nobody was aware of, and things that were considered “edge cases” actually might make up a significant proportion of your customer base.
Users may half-remember old journeys, and this can affect how they perceive what you build, for example if customers accessed services using personal details but didn’t previously need to set a password, they may not actually realise that they don’t have an account when you roll out a shiny new login. Your design may need to factor in these different mental models.
Why being wrong feels wrong
As product managers, it is our job to surface this kind of misalignment as quickly and as cheaply as possible: by talking to users, by testing prototypes, by releasing product increments that are well-enough realised to prove or disprove the concept driving them while keeping the scope of development as small as possible.
When an unknown unknown surfaces, it feels awkward. People will ask, “Why are we only finding out about this now?” This is a fair question. It’s worth exploring whether, with hindsight, you could have got this information any other way. Be honest with yourself. Unpack what you should have done differently and ensure that you build that into how your team approaches problems in the future.
You may conclude that there was no way you could have foreseen how some got this information more efficiently. Indeed, the feedback loops put in place to monitor new work might suddenly shine a light on something that has been failing silently, perhaps for years. However, in the face of counterintuitive results, the expectation of what “should” be happening can distort perceptions of what is happening. People may then discount mounting evidence, saying things like, “That can’t be on fire or we’d have heard about it” even as call numbers rise or conversion rates fall. It’s important to be open to new information and new interpretations of what we think we already know, however uncomfortable that might be.
Can you prepare to be wrong?
As we saw with the public health messaging during Covid, a narrative that adapts as more information emerges is more difficult to land than one that presents itself as unchanging and authoritative. Changing tack during a digital transformation can be similarly challenging, but when communicated well, it can ultimately reinforce the benefits of transformation: a focus on business value, the flexibility to adapt, empowerment for teams to act swiftly on new information. If you build this into how you structure your communications at the start of your transformation, you can be prepared if you do need to pivot your approach.
Having an over-arching vision of the experience you will be enabling through your transformation efforts set out from the start is critical to keeping everyone focussed when so much else is in motion. Keep reiterating the vision; it will become more powerful through repetition. The answer to “Why are we doing this?” should be clear not only to you, but the entire team. If you need to rethink how you will achieve that vision in light of new information, this becomes an easier story to tell because you are countering uncertainty with familiarity and clarity of purpose.
When it comes to delivery, I recommend prioritizing unblocking the biggest challenges that are standing in the way of creating the experience you want to create: maybe this is getting an accurate conversion rate across multiple systems, or managing a handoff between platforms that currently feels really awkward to the end user, or aligning multiple channels to a single source of truth, or something else again. When teams come under fire to deliver something quickly, it can be tempting to continue polishing journeys based on existing workarounds, but ultimately these will never be able to deliver the step change that the business demands. Releasing a “thin slice” that delivers an end-to-end experience that is pared back but still meaningfully better than what users had before will take you in the right direction, faster. It might not be an immediate success, but that is exactly why you do a thin slice and not a fully realised solution.
How do you move past being wrong?
If you have a difficult release, tell that story, not as a failure, but as a turning point in your digital transformation. Surface what you have learned and show how it is helping you to realise the business’s ultimate goals by demonstrating whether you have a viable way to address its biggest challenge. Finding out that a particular solution isn’t going to work is still valuable. If you do have a viable solution but there are smaller issues that are creating a lot of noise, how quickly can you address these? Ensure that the things that are already better are recognised, as these may be taken for granted or not noticed at all.
It’s still more challenging when it’s not obvious why you’re getting a certain outcome, but start with what you know and dig into that. Is your data accurate? Can you drill down further to see where people are struggling, or dropping off? Can you get closer to your customers or front-line teams, to really understand what’s going on? While it can be frustrating to be confronted with data that doesn’t appear to make sense, going beyond received wisdom is how the most critical insights happen, the ones that will enable real progress. These are what I think of as the uncomfortable epiphanies.
While it’s not always possible to predict when inspiration will strike, you can make breakthroughs more likely by creating an environment that makes it safe to share potentially unflattering information or challenge existing narratives. Leading by example and being open with your stakeholders about what you don’t know and how what you do know has changed over time requires courage, clarity of communication, and confidence in where you are headed to give you enough credibility for your message to land. Embracing the idea that you might need to flip what you think you know on its head unlocks the possibility of true transformation, not only by giving you the space to adapt when new information emerges, but also by fostering a culture that is open to insight and change.
Digital transformation is not an easy process because the technical side of it is only a fraction of the change. By acknowledging that challenge up front and setting the scene for the potential need for recalibration, you will be ready to receive and quickly act if you do happen to have an uncomfortable epiphany. Your new insight will propel you forwards into the now slightly less unknown.