Transformation is in every ones mouth, often named as Digital Transformation. Everyone understand that change is needed as well as agility.

But what does transformation mean and is this we are doing really transformation or is it something different?

• Transformation means changing the core, the fundamental concept, the business model.
• Translation is just putting a shell around the old core

Very often we see people talking about all the buzzwords and then they start doing something “new”. In real they don’t dare to change something fundamental. They just put a shell around the old core and still do their business like usual the last years.

Talking with them raised the question on their end: “Why should I change what is bulled proofed because it worked the last 20 years this way?”

How can such a shell look like? We talk about Digitalization and Digital Transformation… and mix both of it. Digitalization is such a shell which helps to translate the old core to the new requirements.

This change is translation, no transformation.

Also very often we can see the old core behind which means it is a bad translation. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bad translation or a good one… this will still work, but for a limited time. This is not future-proof.

From the blue to the green circle in the picture we see a transformation and there is no way to come from a translation to a transformation. The shell of the translation won’t work in a transformation.

Think about your business, your business model and/or your projects… Which circle is yours?

Now you can answer the question yourself why your transformation is no transformation.

What’s next?

The risk changing the core is high. That’s our business which is still working at the moment. We have a big responsible to our employees not to sign up for bankruptcy.

The solution could be #Ambidextrie. Ambidextrie is the corporate ability to focus on both requirements, the operational business and innovation at the same time…. to act with both hands. This will be reached through different kinds of ambidextrie, the structural and the contextual one.

Structural means setting up different structures to realize different grades of innovations while contextual is focussing on the behavior of employees.

Transformation looks like a big risk in the first moment… but there are ways to handle this risk. We just need time and do it concerned and determined.