I was reminded of this after our panel talk @ hashtag#dtxmcr23 yesterday, when someone spoke to me afterwards who’s accountable for the digital workplace strategy at his org.

The great thing about paper, pens, spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups is they’re ultra flexible and the technology works for /you/.

If you have a broken process, invariably, adding more technology makes the situation /worse/. Why? Because you’ve now sealed the process in concrete and making changes is 10x harder (and more expensive). Your users are now beholden to the technology. You’ve probably not made their lives better, or their work more efficient.

Where do you start? I fell in love with Service Design (see comments for Wikipedia link), after seeing folks like Katherine Wastell, Kathryn Grace and Elisse Jones use it at the Co-op. Start by mapping your end to end process – people, systems, tools, workspace – and identify the pain points.

When you do this, more often than not, you find technology is /not/ the answer to the biggest problems.

And if you do choose to add new tech into the mix, you’re doing so with a much better understand of why and what problem it’s going to solve.

To me, that’s the heart of Digital Transformation.