Here are 5 simple tips will help drive success in your organization and make you a (digital) hero:
1. Identify and understand the problems
This is so trivial but yet incredible important and frequently ignored. Companies, governments and other organizations try to solve problems without understanding them. The first step of solving any challenge, with our without technology, is to identify and understand the problem(s). I use plural because we often jump on the first problem when there are several. There’s a myriad of great tools to identify problems including the 5 Whys, Customer Journey mapping, Customer Research, and more.
2. Be inspired and challenged by great people
The honest truth is that most people are comfortable with what they have and know. The unknown and change is frightening. But to survive in the current competitive, fast-moving world we need to challenge ourselves to consider other points of view, think differently, and to change fundamentals.
These are a few ways you can challenge yourself:
- Follow people on Twitter and LinkedIn such as Tom Goodwin, Martin Lindstrom and Benedict Evans
- Meet and hire partners that will challenge you (and don’t always agree)
- Talk to the competition’s customers
3. Always involve unbiased customers
Another basic mistake too many organizations make is solving problems without involving the people that are intended to use it. For example launching a website without testing the concept, content and final design on the intended target audience or deploying an expense management tool without including employees in the evaluation and implementation process.
Lack of time or cost are common excuses, but how much time and money do you lose when a website or software doesn’t achieve its goals?
Always involve end users at every step of the way. Remember that colleagues or the boss are usually not representative of the end users.
4. Define clear success factors, measure and follow-up
How do we know if we’ve achieved success if we didn’t define it in the first place? Many organizations have too generic or end-goal-centric metrics. The most common measures of success are revenue growth and cost savings. The challenge with these is that it’s usually not possible to measure success until e.g. 3-6 months after the project has been completed.
A better alternative is to include success factors that can be measured throughout the project. For example user task completion rate, satisfaction and sticking to the MVP timeline.
5. Understand why Culture eats Strategy for breakfast
Want to change the business or organization? Think that a new app, knowledge sharing system or HR website will achieve radical change? It won’t unless people want change. Ensure that every initiative to change has a plan to get buy-in from the organization including the grass roots. No. 3 above will help, but is not enough.
Use these 5 tips in whatever you do and I can promise you a greater chance of success. Furthermore there’s a pretty good chance that the organization will consider YOU a digital hero.
Data Pulses storytelling 