Digital transformation is hard. Imagine Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. That represents the challenge of digital transformation a few years ago. Today’s digital transformation “Atlases” aren’t just holding the globe — they’re juggling ten of them.   

Things like e-commerce and mobile apps — signs of digital sophistication just a few years ago — are now table stakes. The scope of transformation efforts has expanded to include cloud computing, machine learning, conversational interfaces and much more.

As enterprises wrangle with this growing complexity, they often look for inspiration — or simply to crib best practices — from large technology companies. Just last week, an intelligence technology leader at a Fortune 100 firm asked me, “How do we just do things the way Google (my employer) or Netflix does them?”

In this process, many enterprise executives come to realize that the differences between their businesses and the big technology leaders are not just about software, products or use cases — they’re about a holistic way of operating that can be so complex that it often gets tagged with the catch-all, not particularly meaningful label of “culture.”  

This tendency to label complex organizational operations as “culture” can be counterproductive. Culture and digital transformation must not be viewed as some mythical je ne sais quoi. In my work as a digital consultant, I’ve observed that doing so is often just a way to acknowledge that culture is important without actually doing much to foster real digital transformation. 

How can businesses discern the complexities of modern business operations without inappropriately ascribing them to “culture”? How can they avoid the pursuit of a vague, mythical culture while still creating an innovative, inviting workplace? As Aristotle taught us, the best way to attain virtue is to behave virtuously. By focusing on the right business dimensions, enterprises can accelerate their digital progress while enabling unique, positive cultures to organically arise.   

Building Blocks Of A New Culture: 10 Dimensions Of Digital Transformation

Let’s take a look at ten of the dimensions that have, in my experience, proved themselves most impactful for digital transformation.