There a 3 pillars. You will find much about Marketing and Communication within this blog. Also there is a strong attention on IT, systems and data. In this blog post now I would like to focus on the third pillar… Change Management. This is, maybe, the most important pillar.

Digital Transformation and IoT is changing the world. Consumer adopting very quickly to new technology. Just look at the smartphones and how we use them today. It is not long ago that we hast had mobile phone for calling.

Now we have much data about consumer, our user and everyone we want to act with. We are changing from mass communication to predictive 1:1 communication. Advertising will be replace (not 100%) by information (the right one at the right time and right format for each single  user, clients, consumer, etc.). Everything will be user centric and customer experience is important. What does this means? We need to listen and understand first, then we need to throw our own targets away or far in the background. If I sell consumer products the consumer should have the feeling that I’m focussing on helping him to find the right product and after I have bought it that I really use it and get the most out of it.

What does this means? If I buy an outdoor navigation which is very complex don’t give the user the feeling you want to sell the most expensive one, give him the feeling that you sell him the right one for him. Also you need help him after he bought it to use most of the features and not just the basic ones.

This means don’t give your employees revenue target, give them customer satisfaction targets. You will see the revenue will also grow, maybe not short-term but long-term.

Now we see that there is a huge workload internal. A big project to work together with your HR department. Everyone in the company needs to understand your digital vision, how to adopt this vision for his work and that his targets needs to be changed. The individual targets are maybe fixed in the employment contract and in many cases they have an impact on the variable salary.

Like in every sales process:

• Listen
• Understand and repeat what you have heard
• Find a solution

This is for sure important in direction of your user / clients. First of all it’s important for ever employee in your company. Listen to his pains and issues today, Listen how he understands the new digital transformation vision and what are his thoughts, pains and issues about this vision. Note down every single bit and repeat in your own words what yu have understood. Then make sure to get his issues solved and try to win him for your project by making his live more easy.

Change Management is a long process. It’s nothing new and there are many experts out in the market who can help you to get this project up and running. Be careful that no one thinks there is an external business consultancy coming to cut jobs. Maybe it’s helpful to use them first for the C-level management to get things structured. Then go back in every department by your own and start projects. If the departments then see the huge workload offer them external help. So avoid anxiety and light on the fire and passion in every employee.

Now you have set the most important milestone to have everyone with you. Now you can start changing individual goals, change work (style and processes which are implemented for decades) and build up skills.