Why Many Digital Transformation Efforts Fail and What To Do Instead

What does “digital transformation” really mean anymore? At the recent Red Hat (virtual) Summit, the phrase was called out for being overloaded and erroneously suggesting that adopting new tech will solve all of an org’s challenges. It’s the large IT company’s opinion that “open transformation” beats “digital transformation” — so today we’re examining their case for the former.

Bad digital transformation efforts & their remedies

Charles Svoboda, Lead Transformation Sales Specialist, NTO at Red Hat, started off with some key “digital transformation don’t’s,” including:

“change our culture” rallying cries: generally a recipe for disaster; akin to someone telling another person with anxiety to “just calm down”
- it’s better to enact change through leadership, product management, development, and operations
focusing on just development & behaviors: being too behavior- or developmentally-focused is harmful and can frustrate employees
- gathering metrics is important to actually showing employees where slight behavior adjustments can make a huge difference

Making DevOps a reality

Will Watkins, Transformation Principal Lead at Red Hat, says empathy between developers and operations is critical.

“As leaders we are used to attracting followers as opposed to launching other leaders. But we really need to focus on clearing ‘blockers’ and propping up others below us.”

“If you want to truly understand how DevOps is made possible in an organization, you need to look at your ‘thermometers,’ or the technical and subject matter experts in an org whose opinions shape the space. Those aren’t always the managers or the leaders.”

“Transformation is only really valuable if you’re delivering productive work,” says Svoboda.