98 V I EWPO I NT With market and customer behaviours changing more rapidly, organisations need to embrace uncertainty to ensure they are flexible enough to build truly digital capabilities and cultures DOM GRAV E SON : NE TC E L AND DE ANE BAR K E R : OP T I M I Z E LY This is water American author David Foster Wallace gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 2005. He opened with an analogy about two young fish swimming along, when an older fish passes and asks them, “How’s the water?” Later, one of the younger fish turns to the other and asks, confused, “What’s water?” Wallace’s point was that sometimes we see something so often that we fail to notice it, even though it’s all around us. Sometimes we just don’t know anything else – we’ve been surrounded by something for as long as we can remember, so we lose sight of the fact that it’s there at all. This has happened with digital technology. From the perspective of our markets and customers, there has been so much social, political and behavioural change in the past few years, driving what was already a rapid transition to digital-first engagement with brands, services, and products, into something that is happening even faster. In some cases, digital-first is becoming digital-only. Digital has become ubiquitous. Like water to fish. As customers ourselves, many of us haven't even been really aware this was happening. We are human beings, with ordinary cluttered lives. It hasn’t felt like a sprint to new channels, but that’s what has happened. Digital technology has developed over the past 20 years, primarily as a marketing tool, often owned by marketing or technology teams. This was fit for purpose in the old world, but now we find ourselves in a climate of such rapid change that this approach is starting to show its age and limitations. While customers have already accepted digital as the new ‘water,’ much of the rest of the business world is struggling to keep up. Historically, a program-based, IT-owned and marketing-operated digital approach has been successful, but in the past few years, we’ve seen digital become the de facto first – and for many, only – contact point for customers to engage with brands. The world is changing faster than we can predict, and faster than many can respond with these old models. We need a new way to lead, develop and optimise. How does that change the perspective on the established approaches? If digital is now the new ‘water,’ how do we need to frame questions that will enable us to meet emerging challenges and ride new opportunities? How does this change how we look at and operate digital technology in our organisations? We will need an evolutionary set of objectives and solutions – ones that adapt, change, are light on their feet, and are driven from the front-line as much as from the boardroom. They will need to recognise and celebrate the diversity of customers, market and colleagues, as well as deliver to the individual at all levels from the empowered employee to the needs of an individual customer. Digital technology needs to be something everybody does, feels comfortable with, is tooled up for, and builds excellence in. Our role as leaders is to provide the conditions to enable this capability to flourish, and to ensure that learning is retained and best practices encouraged. As important as providing platforms and guiding processes, is learning to let go a bit. Too often, digital teams within organisations are still setting themselves up for robustness and certainty, but flexibility is really what they need the most. As economic headwinds become even “ Digital technology needs to be something everybody does, feels comfortable with, is tooled up for, and builds excellence in”
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