Breaking Digital Gridlock, + Website

CHAPTER 11Culture and Innovation

I never said I was going to fire anyone that didn't work this weekend, I said I was going to HIRE someone to work the weekend!

Most technology books wouldn't dedicate a part to culture, and I think that mindset is a tremendous failure in other digital transformation approaches. Accessing and adjusting your culture is the most important step in your digital transformation process. The culture of your organization will dictate a great many things, such as your organization's willingness to accept innovation, your organization's ability to adapt to change, and the organization's ability to resolve internal conflicts. Culture will also dictate habits; your organization's muscle memory is dictated by your culture. Muscle memory is the default reaction for how an employee responds to a situation. For instance, I once worked with an organization that had a problem with reversing fees. Customers would call in to the organization and ask to have fees reversed, the call center representatives (CSR) would look to see if it qualified to be reversed based on rules set forth by the organization, and often the CSR would deny the reversal, only to have the customer ask to speak to the manager and the manager would override them and reverse it. After a while, the CSRs realized that the manager was going to override them every time and started reversing fees by ...