There doesn't seem to be a day going by without some bad news story about digital transformation.  If you drill down on the reasons often it's because that digital transformation is seen as system replacement or it's something about IT.

But how do we transform our business?  How do we get a business with the employees have purpose?  Where the employees have a great experience?  How do we win more business? Especially in these difficult times.  How do we retain our customers? How do we retain our employees? How do we get the best employees? Better still, how do we become the employer of choice in our category? 

Wouldn't it be better if we stopped pushing people away and we changed this to people being drawn to us as a business? 

The Pandemic has accelerated the need for transformation 

The problem is this.  Everything you do currently pushes people away from your business.  Think about sales, if a salesperson calls you up, what's the first thing you want to do? Put the phone down of course.  The same with the endless email interruptions.

How about if there was a way to pull people closer, your prospects, your clients, your employees and your future employees ....?

There is social media.  But not how you treat it right now as a tactic, but using to digital transformation your business using social media as a strategy. 

A CEO Just said to me

In the past he would go to a seminar, hopefully look at the attendee list.  Otherwise, go up to people and get business cards.

He would then go back to the office, give the business cards to his PA and hopefully a conversation would come from that and maybe work.

He now says that "there is a race on.  First we need to shock people into understanding that the world has changed.  Second, we need to give them the skills to work in the changing world."  I couldn't put it better myself. 

He went onto say "By giving my team(s) “new world” skills will gives us a competitive advantage."

Interesting that he finished by saying

"The thing is there is a “burning bridge” and we need to make sure we are over that bridge."  

How Do We Get The C-Suite On Board?

We run a strategy day for C-Suite members and their plus ones.  What I mean here are people that report to the board who may have influence and not authority.

The last thing a CEO needs right now is a twitter course.

This is a day to understand the competitive advantage for using social media strategically.

We start by giving everybody an overview of the current state of social media in the world, aligned with the current research. 

This October (2020) report by Simon Kemp outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.  


Worldwide social media users: 4.14 billion - 53% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.

Simon says that "two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media."

Other Research ..

Mckinsey Gartner Hootsuite and We Are Social  Hubspot Google MIT Trustradius Twilio

Mission Statement

We then get the group to come up with a mission statement, not for the business, but for the project.  They then mark it out of 5, with 5 being "this is an important project we have to do" and 1 being "this is something we can put off".

"As Is" and "To Be"

We then take the the team through the results of a some research that we will have run via an online questionnaire before the event, to formulate a discussion of the "as is" processes.  We also have a discussion and brainstorm about the the "to be" processes and the future state of the digital transformation.

The brainstorm will also include a discussion about the blocker, the people blockers, the process blockers and the technology blockers. 

What Does Not Work and Why

The mistake that many people make with digital transformation is they  look for free stuff on the internet, then they might hire a person for "hints and tips" or maybe a "masterclass".  I was just on a call with people that had hired a Linkedin expert in the US for "Hint and Tips" for their sales team.  The Linkedin expert did a two hour session.  I asked them, "what happened after that two hour session?"  

The answer "nothing".

The problem with social media is you cannot get "a little bit pregnant".  All of these courses exploit people's ignorance.

Social Media is binary, it's either 1 or 0.  It's either yes or know.

So what is 1 x 1 x 1x 0 ?

It's zero ..... if you miss a step out the result is zero.

People think if you put in 70% of the effort you get 70% of the result.  It's not, 70% of the effort creates zero of the result.  Like a jigsaw, it's not all complete until you put all the pieces in.  A jigsaw that is 70% complete, is 70% complete. 

Getting somebody to do "hints and tips" is like paying for somebody to do the edging of the jigsaw, the problem is that the customer expectation is they are getting the jigsaw completed.  Do you see the mismatch. 

What Can Digital Transformation With Social Do to Your Business?

As mentioned above, social media, when used strategically within a business can transform that business to digital.  Often people see this as transformation of sales, of course, it can be, digitally transforming sales is a great place.

But in fact all departments, Human Resources (HR), Customer Service, Marketing, Procurement, Supply Chain, etc can all be digitally transformed with social.  Stripping out cost and making you more efficient and effective.

In sales it can reduce your cost of sales (and marketing) while at the same time increase your sales by 30% and reduce your sales cycle by 40%.  We can also increase your win rate, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Thing about similar business process and efficiency savings that you can make as you roll this out across the business?

One client, in North America, stripped out the cost of recruitment, for example the cost of recruitment advertising and the cost of recruiters / headhunters.  I realise that the Pandemic may have changed the talent market, but getting "the right" employees is still the objective.  Social and digital will help you do that and to become the employer of choice within your industry. 

Time For Digital

If you are looking for a different approach to digital, something that isn't an app or a piece of tech.  Something that will give your business and employees purpose, while at the same time making you more competitive and enabling you to generate more business (even during a pandemic) you should get in contact with me or one of the DLA Ignite team.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.