The journey from analog to digital | Lee Bryant | Engati CX

What is the philosophy behind digital transformations? And how can we as leaders transform our business in such a way that drives efficiency and satisfaction within the organization and its customers? Join us on a journey to digital transformation, with the co-founder of Headshift, Lee Bryant on Engati CX.

Lee Bryant is passionate about using social technology to put humans front and center of the way we do things in the Twenty-First Century. He believes that Social networks, not bureaucracies, are the organizing principle of the current era. He co-founded Headshift in 2002 to investigate new uses for social software inside companies and organizations, which became a leading international social business consultancy and was acquired by Dachis Group in 2009. Lee is now exploring new forms of organizational design and the future(s) of the firm enabled by new technology at Shift*Base Research and Post*Shift.

The journey from analog to digital — A conversation with Lee Bryant

The journey from analog to digital

This section will contain a summary of our interview with Lee Bryant. But if you’d like to listen to the full interview, we’ve left the Spotify podcast for you below.

Everyone is now jumping onto Digital transformations? How would you advise organizations to go about planning for their Digital journeys? Which functions would you start first on?

We need to think about different domains and levels of activity before we jump on digital transformation. A lot of companies hop on the bandwagon and jump to building shiny new apps outside. But if the company’s infrastructure isn’t operating in a connected and smart way, we’ll be making a mistake.

Lee’s advice is to first build a base for digital transformation. To not optimize digitally outside, until we’ve got the interiors sorted. We have to figure out how to do the work we already do in a better, more efficient way, connected way. So technologies like automation, standardization, and smart systems are truly changing the way we work.

“When we create a strong base of business capabilities, we can do the most exciting digital innovation with our customers.”

It’s important to not only on the outside but to focus inwards as well. This applies to customer experience as well. The best customer experience comes from the best employee experience and vice versa.

That’s why most companies find this challenging. To operate across all domains, we need to focus on not just the tech. But how this impacts structures, cultures, processes, practices, and leadership.

What role does leadership play in ensuring that the digital transformation is smooth and the entire organization accepts it?

It is a multifaceted challenge. We need to show digital transformation and the culture we want to see by example. We need to say that this is important and something we need to focus on.

But we also need to step back and give up some control and decision-making for the rest of the organization. Our job as leaders is to set the context and to create a system for people to excel and do their best work. It is not to make all of the decisions.

According to Lee, one thing hierarchical systems excels at is that it’s legible. To better leverage this, we need to have better mapping and provide better information about how things fit together.

We need to be leaders, not managers. We need to be connectors, not dictators. The role of being a connector is something we excel at because of our position looking across the organization.

So we need to be the organization’s architects. We need to help redesign the fabric of an organization for digital transformation to work.

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The journey from analog to digital — A Spotify Podcast with Lee Bryant

Lee goes over how to incorporate more tech like social media and AI to drive more efficiency in our organizations. And above all, how to continue our journey to digital transformation more effectively.

Listen to the full interview here:

Engati CX

We hope you learned a lot about the shift from analog to digital. Engati CX will be back with a new expert in a new episode soon. Stay tuned.

Find Lee Bryant

Lee is always sharing brilliant insights on his social media. Find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, his personal website, or contact him on POST*SHIFT.

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