Wednesday in the Woods · episode 003
How do I Digital Transformation ?¿?
8:27youtube · Licensio, LLC
description
Jill is begging me to stop the deadpan slow-talk bit. Maybe some plot development - like a chance encounter with an occult creature that carries mysterious powers - will help re-energize my character or give him some new ability...
Anyway, on this week’s Wednesday in the Woods, we’re trying to figure out what on earth people mean when they say “#digital #transformation.” I mean, we’ve had digital computers for somewhere between 40 and 200 years, depending on your definition, right? So haven’t we been experiencing digital transformation this whole time?
I won’t spoil my take since you can listen to my perspective in the video. Listen really, really slowly. Like, if you took an Obama speech and dialed it back to 50% speed slow. But it’s in there if you can survive the aural hazing.
In the video, we also discuss how digital transformation connects to other “hot topics” - like #PredictiveAnalytics or Robotic Process Automation - in our strange little world of business. Here’s a whole list of the ones we’ll discuss:
‣ #Design Thinking ‣ #DataStrategy ‣ #DataScience ‣ #Statistics ‣ #Visualization ‣ Business Intelligence (#BI) ‣ (Predictive) Analytics ‣ Machine Learning ‣ #Dashboards ‣ #Automation ‣ Business/Robotic Process Automation (#BPA #RPA)
Over the next few days, we’re going to combine the lens of “People, Process, and Technology” with the "Plan-Do-Check-Act" framework for a helpful way to categorize these ideas. Here's a sneak peek for a few definitions:
★ Design Thinking: What does digital transformation have to do with design thinking? Well, technically, nothing. But once you realize that digital transformation is just using modern technology to improve the quality and efficiency of processes, you see how design thinking can make a big difference in the outcome. A bad process DIGIFIED is normally just more bad faster. And sometimes, a good process that has been DIGITALIZATIONIZED is no longer good. So design thinking can provide tools to make sure that we are “transforming” the right process in the right way.
★ Robotic Process Automation (RPA): What if you had a process that previously involved a human using a mouse or keyboard? You know, like, working. And what if the thing that they were doing didn’t have an associated API? Well, what if the computer could move the mouse and keyboard by itself - you know, just like that possessed desktop in your garage used to do? That’s it. End of story.
★ Data Strategy: Let’s imagine you have a computer. Now you can store data! Should you collect it all? Should you store it in a series of folders named after the 101 Dalmatians, each containing a clue to the location of the next record? Or should you think about what you need to collect, where you should put it, and what system of organization and reference to use? Probably that.
So, stay tuned for more helpful definitions. And in the meantime, get out there and keep digitransformitalizationizing!
transcript
~824 words · showhide
from the human-edited captions published with the video. timestamps jump to that point in the video.
- 0:51
Good morning. I was just looking for the AI. I'm glad you're here because on today's Wednesday in the Woods, we'll be discussing digital and whether it can help us find the AI. So, digital. What is it? What does it have to do with robotic process automation (RPA) or machine learning (ML)? And, again, how can it help us hunt down the elusive AI? Digital is, in essence, nothing more, in my opinion, than an effort to understand and improve the quality and efficiency of our organizations using digital technology.
- 1:32
Ironically, digital technology is potentially 100 to 200 years old, depending on what definition you use for it. But, apparently, we have only recently discovered in business the use of such technology. And so, for many years, even predating our modern digital transformation abilities, we thought about improving our people, process, and technology through simple frameworks and more complex frameworks. Simpler for example including the "P-D-C-A" Plan, Do Check Act cycle, and more complex such as Six Sigma (6S), inspired by philosophies such as kaizen.
- 2:17
And, so, digital transformation or digital is really nothing more than planning, doing, checking, and acting in a fashion that utilizes modern digital technology. And this is connected to many of the other phrases that we may hear. So, people, process, and technology drive almost all of these frameworks, and digital is, in my opinion, most especially focused on the improvement of processes that otherwise have yet to be fully technology-enabled.
- 2:56
This encapsulates not just design thinking, using concepts such as user experience, but also incorporates other forms of process improvement or process consulting. Once such design thinking and process improvements have been completed, then organizations undergoing digital transformation typically move into the phase of automation. Automation is technically what a computer does, but again, apparently, we have only recently discovered this phenomenon.
- 3:29
And, so, phrases such as business process automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refer to the idea that a process that was otherwise completed by a human, perhaps on a computer or not on a computer, is now completed by a computer, either completely or in part. It is taking a process, identifying actions, and changing where that action is performed or by whom that action is performed. That's it. Technology-enablement of processes does not end simply with automation, however.
- 4:04
In many contexts, the automation requires something in excess of moving a mouse around a previously human-oriented process. It may involve a better understanding of what has happened or better prediction of what may occur. And, so, the phrases "business intelligence" and analytics, and the more technical term statistics, or colloquially data science terms, typically refer to understanding the inputs or processes' dynamics or outputs of the activities of a business.
- 4:45
And when we do this in a forward-looking way, we often call it predictive, and when we look at it from a causal or simply a historical perspective, the word predictive is not used. So, these concepts are sometimes imbued with other connotations. So, for example, business intelligence is almost always embedded in a conversation around reports, such as tables or charts, whereas predictive analytics may not quite be so tied to the concepts of visualization or presentation.
- 5:25
But, at the end of the day these all come back to understanding data. So, you can see how a data strategy or digitalization is a requirement for digital transformation. If digital transformation is simply using the technology that we have today to provide better quality or efficiency, then we have no way of doing that - either of executing on those processes or of understanding whether the processes were successful - if we do not collect data around those processes. And the purposeful collection of data aligned with goals is a data strategy.
- 6:05
Simply, thinking about what we do, why we do it, and what we want the outcome of those actions to be is the first step. And we subsequently in a data strategy attempt to collect and properly store information related to answering those questions. And so we can see that digital transformation is deceptively simple. It is nothing more than doing our job using the technology that is available to us today. As managers, we care about quality.
- 6:42
As managers, we care about efficiency. As managers, we should be aware of that which is available to us from a soft technology perspective, such as design thinking, or a hard technology perspective, such as neural networks, and, by simply caring about efficiency, caring about quality, and solutioning using the tools that are available to us today, we can achieve digital transformation - possibly without even using such ridiculous terms.
- 7:16
And so, unfortunately, we have yet to find the AI, but on next week's episode, I hope the concepts that we have uncovered today will assist us in our journey to track down this elusive beast. Good luck and see you next week.