Leading Digital – Turning Technology into Business Transformation by Westmann, Bonnet and McAffee – Key Points

Leading Digital outlines how firms in any industry can harness digital technologies to gain strategic advantage. The book categorises four types of organisation according to their ‘level of digital mastery’ with the follow characteristics:

1. Beginners – an immature digital culture usually with a management sceptical of the business value of advanced technologies; 
2. Fashionistas – a digital culture which lacks an overarching vision; but has many advanced features which exist in silos. 
3. Conservatives – an overarching digital vision which is underdeveloped, but active steps are being taken to build digital skills and culture; there is strong digital governance across silos.
4. Digital Masters – a strong digital culture flowing from an overarching digital vision with excellent governance across silos; many digital initiatives generating measurable business value. Digital Masters combine digital capabilities and leadership capabilities to achieve performance that is greater than either dimension can deliver on its own. 

The book also has some very useful self-assessment tools:

• How well is your organisation building digital capabilities?
• How well is your organisation building leadership capabilities?

Structure of the Book

Part One: Digital Capability: the what of digital mastery 

• How firms engage with customers and how they can create a ‘compelling customer experience’. 
• How digital technologies can transform operational processes and ‘exploit the power of core processes’
• How digital technologies can produce and reinvent new business models. 

Part Two: Leadership Capabilities: the how of digital mastery

• How to create a ‘transformative digital vision’. 

Re-envisioning the customer experience

Re-envisioning operational processes

Combining both of these to re-envision business models 

• How to engage and energize employees to make the vision a reality. 
• How to put in place good ‘Digital Governance’ which will keep the transformation on the right track. o Standandise o Automate o Accelerate 
• How to develop ‘technology leadership capabilities’ to drive the transformation forward. 

Part Three: the Leader’s Playbook for Digital Transformation – concrete management guidance on how to get started. 

• How to frame the ‘Digital Challenge’
• How to focus investments
• How to mobilise the organisation 
• How to sustain the change. 

Some favourite quotes from the book: 

“The digital operations advantage is about more than great tools. It’s a combination of people, processes, and technology connected in a unique way to help you outperform you competitors.” p.69 

“Companies fall apart when their model is so successful that is stifles thinking that challenges it.” p.87 

“Leadership capabilities are essential to achieving true digital transformation, they turn digital investment into digital advantage.” p.95 

“When your technology leadership capabilities are weak, everything is a risky struggle. When they are strong, you can do great things.” p.171 

“Focussing investment is where the rubber meets the road in digital transformation.” p.189 

Some thoughts in response to the book

• Digital technologies have not brought cost savings in education because of increased compliance. 
• Digital transformation will not be possible in secondary schooling until it is liberated from the shackles of the (British) examination system. 
• So many schools have not imposed digital governance. Enthusiasts have been allowed to run off in all directions. There needs to be a balance between empowerment and anarchy.

Wearable Tech Policy for School

At Berkhamsted, we are committed to pupils using mobiles devices to support their learning through appropriate use in school and at home. Alongside this, we believe that we have an educational responsibility to help young people manage how and when they use new technologies and thus have always taken an approach that we would rather 'educate' than 'ban',

So working within this context, the Senior Leadership Team this afternoon grappled with the thorny issue of how we approach the issue of 'Wearable Technology' (such as the Apple Watch) in school. It was a thoughtful and lively debate:

On one level, it would appear that there is little difference between having a fully connected mobile device in one's pocket and on one's wrist, so why the fuss?

Well, we decided that there are two reasons why a watch poses additional issues:

1. First, from a teacher's perspective, wearable technology is very difficult to police.  When necessary, it is relatively easy for a teacher to say 'your phone needs to be in your pocket/bag', it becomes much more difficult to ask the class to remove their watches.
2. Secondly, from a pupil's perspective, wearable technology is less easy to ignore. The buzz of a phone on vibrate mode in a pocket or bag is out of sight and sometimes earshot - whereas the temptation to catch up on a text/ or social media update is almost impossible to ignore when it's on your wrist.

So, we took a middle way: not banning, but discouraging wearable technology in school: our mobile device policy now has an additional paragraph as follows:

Berkhamsted School Wearable Tech Policy:

1. If Wearable Tech is worn in lessons or in public areas around the school, the ‘Do not disturb’/’flight mode’ should be activated.
2. Wearable Tech must not be worn in exams as this will result in disqualification. Exam Regulations do not allow any device capable of mobile communication. 
3. Our strong advice is that pupils should not bring Wearable Tech devices to school, because they are likely to be a greater distraction than other mobile devices. 
4. If a Wearable Tech device is deemed by the teacher to be causing a distraction around school, it is liable to confiscation until the end of the school day.

Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age - Book Review

Over the past twenty years most of us have spent a significant part of our working and leisure hours struggling (with varying degrees of success) to keep up with the pace of technological change. We have had little time to step back to reflect on the impact that it is all having on our lives. In Program or be Programmed Douglas Rushkoff presses the pause button to outline 'Ten Commands for a Digital Age' - suggestions for how we can regain control and make digital technologies once again work for us. Each of the 'commands' are based on tendencies or 'biases' of digital media.

1. Time: Do not be always on. Digital technologies are biased away from time, and toward asynchronicity. Computers fundamentally operate outside time: a computer will wait forever for the next command. It is our use of computers that has made everything immediate. In order to regain control we need to disengage and "not be always on". The text/email/FB update will wait. 
2. Place: Live in person. Digital media are biased away from the local, and toward distance/dislocation. Last week, I was in the open air restaurant of a five-star resort looking out over one of the most beautiful bays in Vietnam, a family of six (2 grandparents, 2 parents and 2 children) were totally disconnected. They sat around the dinner table playing on their phones. We see this all the time. We need to live in person and not in a virtual world. 
3. Choice: You may always choose none of the above. The digital realm is biased towards choice, because everything ultimately must be expressed in terms of discrete, yes-no, symbolic language. In moving from the real world to the digital something gets lost in translation because inevitably digital representations are compromises. Too often we are forced into making choices that have been predetermined by the programmer. We need to recognise that we don't always have to play the programmer's game and choose not to make a choice. 
4. Complexity: You are never completely right. Digital technology is biased toward simplicity and to reducing complexity. We must take care not to mistake digital models with reality. There is evidence that young people are increasingly finding it difficult to distinguish between experiences that they have had in real and virtual environments. 
5. Scale: One size does not fit all. Digital technologies are biased toward abstraction i.e. to the separation of the individual from what is real (This is the most complex and subtle argument in the book). All media are biased towards abstraction: the written word separates the speaker from his words; the printing press disconnects the author from the page itself; digital hypertext disconnects the reader not only from the author but also from the original context, as well as enabling the reader to exit from a document at any point. The most obvious manifestation of the propensity of the digital towards abstraction is our daily encounter of 'people wearing headphones, staring into smart phones, ensconced in their private digital bubbles as they walk down what were once public streets'. 
6. Identity: Be yourself. Digital technology is biased toward depersonalisation. The less we take responsibility for what we say and do online, the more likely we are to behave in ways that reflect our worst natures. We must make an effort not to operate anonymously. We must be ourselves. 
7. Social: Do not sell your friends. Our digital networks are biased towards social connections - toward contact. Any effort to redefine or hijack those connections for profit end up compromising the integrity of the network, and compromising the real promise of contact. 'Friendships, both digital and incarnate, do create value. But this doesn't mean that the people in our lives can be understood as commodities to be collected and counted.' 
8. Fact: Tell the Truth. Digital Technology is biased against fiction and towards facts, against story and toward reality. In the Internet age "the truth will out" - eventually - so tell the truth. There are significant implications here for the world of advertising. 'Those who succeed in the new bazaar [= communication age] will be the ones who can quickly evaluate what they're hearing and learn to pass on the stuff that matters.' 
9. Openness: Share don't steal. Digital technology is biased in favour of openness and sharing. The Internet was built on a "gift economy" based more on sharing than profit, however we have great difficulty distinguishing between sharing and stealing. At present 'we are operating a C21 digital economy on a C13 printing-press-based operating system' - We need a system upgrade that rewards creators in a digital age with zero duplication costs. 
10. Purpose: Program or be Programmed. Digital technology is programmed and therefore is biased towards those who write the code. If we don't learn to program, we risk being programmed ourselves. 'Each media revolution offers people a new perspective through which to relate to their world .... With the advent of each new medium the status quo is revised and rewritten by those who have gained access to the tools of its creation .... Access is usually limited to a small elite.' 'The invention of the printing press led not to society of writers but one of readers; we don't make radio and TV we listen and watch it .... Computers and networks do offer us the ability to write, but the underlying capability of the computer era is actually programming - which almost no one knows how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us. Only an elite gains the ability to fully exploit the new medium on offer.' 

This is an outstanding thought-provoking book which reflects on how we can regain our humanity in face of rapid technological change. Rushmore is no Luddite - he is an insider who, in the spirit of the age, has shared his insights. Program or be Programmed is a short book which will take a couple of hours to read - time well spent as it will change the way you think about our Brave New World.