How To Create the Big Picture for Digital Transformation

“Customer expectations are far exceeding what you can really do. That means a fundamental rethinking about what we do with technology in organizations.” — George Westerman

You can drive better Digital Transformation, disrupt industries, and make new markets if you know how.

I’m going to share one of my best tools for driving Digital Transformation better.

I call it the “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation and it’s a way to create the bird’s-eye view for large-scale Digital Transformation efforts.

Digital innovation is a great way to transform the future of industry solutions and drive digital transformation with skill.

If you want to drive Digital Transformation and innovate better, then you need better tools in your toolbox.

And this tool is a hammer, but please don’t turn everything into a nail.

Let’s pull out our Digital Transformation toolbox and take a look at this beauty…

Drive Digital Transformation with the “Big Picture” (The ‘’Bird’s-Eye View”)

One of my favorite tools for leading Digital Transformation is what I call the Digital Transformation “Big Picture.”

The main idea is to summarize the key trends, the vision, and the industry solutions for a given industry.

You can use the Digital Transformation “Big Picture” to create a directional blueprint for your organization’s digital innovation and digital transformation.

By laying out the “Big Picture” of your Digital Transformation plays in terms of customers, employees, operations, and products, you create a simple mental model.

And sharing mental models is what the best business leaders do, that other leaders don’t.

Your “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation effectively becomes a tool to both lead your organization’s Digital Transformation journey, as well as to disrupt the industry, depending on how you use it.

You can also use it to create new partnerships and collaborations.

But the “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation helps you put it into perspective and map it back into your game plan.

You Can Disrupt Any Industry

You can also use the “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation to lead digital innovation to shape the future of an industry and shape the future industry solutions.

The “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation helps you work Future-Back while working Current-Forward.

Future-Back means you have hypotheses and assumptions about what the world will look like in the future (1 year from now, 3 years from now, etc.)

Current-Forward means while you may have foresight and insight into the future, you are focused right here, right now on problems in hand.

The way to integrate Future-Back and Current-Forward is to work on small business experiments today to validate your future business models and build empathy for ever-changing customer expectations.

To disrupt any industry, I would simply create a collection of industry solution patterns and then review with a team of experts working closely with customers and stakeholders.

The sweet spot is when you connect pains and needs to desired outcomes and aspirations.

Trends help reveal changes in the key drivers behind a market. You can think of the market as the problems people are paying to solve, driven by their pains, needs, desired outcomes, and aspirations.

What’s important here is that you are looking for shifts in value and primarily underserved pains and needs in the market.

I’ll cover more on how to disrupt any industry in the future, but for now, I’ll point out that Blue Ocean Strategy is one of the most powerful frameworks for disruptive innovation.

Business Before Technology

When you figure out the “Big Picture” view for an industry, your focus should be around transforming the customer experience.

Some say customer experience is the new value chain.

One of the best mantras we used on our team long ago was:

“Business before technology.”

It reminded everyone on the team to first figure out what the future business should be, then use technology to enable it.

One of my colleagues riffed off this idea and would remind us, “People before business, business before technology.”

Later, as our team evolved, our new team manager, came up with a compelling and complimentary mantra:

“Business BECAUSE of technology.”

This put the focus on the fact that every business was becoming a digital business.

It also reinforced the idea that we should really figure out what can a business do now with technology, that it could not do before.

As John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco, put it, “technology is not an enabler—technology is the business.”

Better Digital Transformation Starts with Bold Ambitions

Companies of all shapes and sizes fail at Digital Transformation because they don’t start big enough in their ambitions.

They don’t reimagine what their business could be or should be for the Digital Era.

If you don’t start with bold ambitions, you compromise your way out of a compelling vision for the future.

Don’t. That’s how you lose the future, not win it.

You first need to figure out what the right thing to do is.

If you start out with what’s acceptable, you give away what’s important.

Peter Drucker wrote about compromise long ago:

“Don’t you, above all, concern yourself with compromises that might be needed to make your recommendations acceptable.

There is not one executive in the company who does not know how to make every single conceivable compromise without any help from you.”

(see first figure out the right thing to do)

Example “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation for an Industry

Here is an illustrative example of putting the “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation for an industry on a page.

Note that none of this is about perfection—it’s all about progressing your Digital Transformation journey.

The quality of your “Big Picture” will directly depend on how well you link digital innovation to pains, needs, and desired outcomes in the Voice-of-the-Customer.

The format is simple on purpose, so that it’s easy to review in real time, live at a whiteboard, or virtually around the world.

It also works well for asynchronous collaboration because you can share the information as a document that individuals can contribute to.

Item	Notes
Trends / Focus	Unprecedented level of competition Vanishing revenue from traditional services and products Customer ownership and loyalty concerns Capitally intensive business, exacerbated by 5G rollouts Reduced margins and profitability Complex regulatory environment Slower than expected executing on digital strategies
Vision	We Engage Our Customers with Better Customer Experiences Understand customer needs through a 360 view of the customer and artificial intelligence, enabling amazing service experiences to customers through tailored customer journeys that provide relevant products and services over any channel to improve service uptake and reduced churnWe Empower Our Employees with a Modern Workplace Employees have the flexibility, mobility, and tools they need to work more effectively, collaborating across boundaries, creating an environment for innovation, increasing employee satisfaction and enabling the creation of excellent customer experiencesWe Transform Our Products with New Revenue Streams Move from being a traditional service provider with limited revenue opportunities, to being a digital service and platform provider, effectively working with partners to develop and provide a wide range of products, services, and platform ecosystemsWe Achieve Operational Excellence and Optimize Our Operations Aggressively manage investment and operational processes, provide efficient self-healing services and virtual network functions that scale dynamically to service any level of demand through intelligent and automated provisioning
Personas	CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) COO (Chief Operating Officer) CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer) CPO (Chief Product Officer) CDO (Chief Digital Officer) CFO (Chief Financial Officer)
Customers	Target Persona / Stakeholder: CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Intelligent Customer Service Truly understand customers and provide seamless experiences at every customer interaction Imagine If … Imagine if we could deliver personalized experiences, allowing customers to relate to us in a more natural and easy way, and generate a new relationship of trust with them based on transparency and control Current State Our customers are unable to connect with us in convenient natural ways. Our customers have inconsistent and confusing experiences when doing business with us. We don’t understand enough about our customers’ needs. We struggle with customer loyalty and satisfaction, and customer churn from poor customer service is a significant problem. Desired Future State We have a 360 view of our customers, supported by comprehensive data management, analytics, and artificial intelligence. We can predict which products and services are best adapted to the needs of our customers and when they may need them, taking action autonomously and proactively. We dynamically create engaging, fun, and personalized interactive experiences for every stage of the customer journey across multiple channels. Our customers are in control of their relationship with us and have a high level of trust and loyalty.
Employees	Target Persona/Stakeholder: CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer) Frictionless Collaboration for Employees Increase employee productivity and collaboration by enabling an agile workplace to create an environment for spontaneous innovation Imagine If … Imagine if employees were able to collaborate across all organizational boundaries, creating agile teams that leverage knowledge and excellence from anywhere in the business to deliver impact and innovate at scale Current State We make it difficult for employees to work outside the siloes of their respective areas in the organization. Our employees are not able to share information and content with freedom within the organization or with external parties. We are unable to translate individual knowledge to institutional knowledge and expertise. We do not enable employees to freely share ideas and innovate at the coalface of the business. Desired Future State Our employees have the flexibility, mobility, and tools they need to work more effectively, increasing employee satisfaction and productivity. We collaborate throughout the organization to resolve issues, identify opportunities for increasing revenue, share ideas and innovate. Our employees freely share information and content across organizational boundaries whilst protecting and securing sensitive information. We automatically identify and harvest knowledge, content and expertise and dynamically connect teams and individuals to create reuse of best practice.
Operations	Target Persona: COO (Chief Operating Officer)Infrastructure as a Service Evolve IT and Network infrastructure to the hybrid cloud to take advantage of cloud scale and agilityImagine If … Imagine if you could shift all your infrastructure to a hybrid cloud environment, creating agility and operational efficiency through automation of service creation and managementCurrent State We have expensive legacy IT infrastructure which constrains the implementation of new IT applications. We have vendor specific monolithic network infrastructure that is expensive to buy and maintain and cannot be easily integrated. Our operational staff are burdened with many manual tasks and cannot consistently meet SLAs for service creation or issue resolution. Our business is frustrated at not being able to meet customer expectations and demand. Desired Future State We have migrated from legacy infrastructure to cloud enabled hybrid infrastructure that provides agility, speed, scalability and cost savings. We are able to partner with many telecoms providers and app developers to build our own network infrastructure in the cloud. We have significant levels of automation in our operational environments and our operational staff can focus on higher order tasks and projects. We have become a partner to our business stakeholders and are able to deliver needed infrastructure at scale with agility.
Products	Target Persona / Stakeholder: CPO (Chief Product Officer) Ecosystem Enablement Move from an “own the product” focus to a “platform and ecosystem” focus to enable new complex business models and revenue streams. Imagine If … Imagine if we could create an extensive open digital ecosystem by using multiple platforms such as IoT, Blockchain, 5G, etc. to operate and monetize new digital services Current State We are caught up in the traditional communications service provider business model with its heavy reliance on basic connectivity services. Our products and services are monolithic and we need to rely on traditional bundling to differentiate. We are not open and are not able to expose our own products, services and capabilities for use by 3rd parties. We do not create partnerships and have a go-it-alone culture. Future State We develop new business models of any type and complexity with multiple partners to serve a diverse set of customers across various industries We create digital products and services within the broader ecosystem using multiple platforms We have the analytical and machine learning capabilities we need to supply relevant insights and predictions from across the ecosystem. We create partnerships with speed and agility at scale to enable diverse ecosystems where we partner at any level of the value chain.

You Can Evolve Your Digital Transformation Year by Year

Sometimes to take a leap forward, it helps to take a look back.

Here is a simple example:

Item	Year 1	Year 2
Trends / Focus	Unprecedented level of competition Vanishing revenue from traditional services and products Regulatory control Large cost of maintaining systems and networks Reduced margins and profitability	Unprecedented level of competition Vanishing revenue from traditional services and products Customer ownership and loyalty concerns Capitally intensive business, exacerbated by 5G rollouts Reduced margins and profitability Complex regulatory environment Slower than expected executing on digital strategies
Vision	We Achieve Customer Experience Excellence Provide excellent service experiences to customers throughout their journey, better understand customer needs, provide relevant products and services over any channel, and reduce churn.We Create New Revenue Streams Move from being a traditional service provider with limited revenue opportunities, to being a digital service provider, effectively working with partners to develop and provide a wide range of products, services, and content.We Achieve Operational Excellence Aggressively manage investment and operational costs, integrate commoditized services, and provide efficient services through collaboration, service productivity, and improved customer insight.	We Engage Our Customers with Better Customer Experiences Understand customer needs through a 360 view of the customer and artificial intelligence, enabling amazing service experiences to customers through tailored customer journeys that provide relevant products and services over any channel to improve service uptake and reduced churnWe Empower Our Employees with a Modern Workplace Employees have the flexibility, mobility, and tools they need to work more effectively, collaborating across boundaries, creating an environment for innovation, increasing employee satisfaction and enabling the creation of excellent customer experiencesWe Transform Our Products with New Revenue Streams Move from being a traditional service provider with limited revenue opportunities, to being a digital service and platform provider, effectively working with partners to develop and provide a wide range of products, services, and platform ecosystemsWe Achieve Operational Excellence and Optimize Our Operations Aggressively manage investment and operational processes, provide efficient self-healing services and virtual network functions that scale dynamically to service any level of demand through intelligent and automated provisioning
Personas	CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) COO (Chief Operating Officer)	CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) COO (Chief Operating Officer) CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer) CPO (Chief Product Officer) CDO (Chief Digital Officer) CFO (Chief Financial Officer)
Customers	Target Persona / Stakeholder: CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)Omni-Channel Experience for Customers Better understand customers and provide a seamless experience across all channels Imagine if … Imagine if you could deliver personalized experiences, products, and services to your customers through all channels, inspiring loyalty, and driving sales. Current State Our customers are unable to connect with us in convenient or timely ways. Our customers have inconsistent and confusing experiences when doing business with us. We don’t understand enough about our customers’ needs. We struggle with customer loyalty and satisfaction, and customer churn is a significant problem. Desired Future State Our customers can connect with us from anywhere, anytime, using the channels most convenient to them. We remain continuously engaged with our customers, have insight their needs, and provide valuable products and services. We have created inviting and interactive experience across every stage of the customer journey that inspires trust and loyalty. Our customers can use self-service tools, including chat bots, to purchase products, gain information, and obtain support.	Target Persona / Stakeholder: CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Intelligent Customer Service Truly understand customers and provide seamless experiences at every customer interaction Imagine If … Imagine if we could deliver personalized experiences, allowing customers to relate to us in a more natural and easy way, and generate a new relationship of trust with them based on transparency and control Current State Our customers are unable to connect with us in convenient natural ways. Our customers have inconsistent and confusing experiences when doing business with us. We don’t understand enough about our customers’ needs. We struggle with customer loyalty and satisfaction, and customer churn from poor customer service is a significant problem. Desired Future State We have a 360 view of our customers, supported by comprehensive data management, analytics, and artificial intelligence. We can predict which products and services are best adapted to the needs of our customers and when they may need them, taking action autonomously and proactively. We dynamically create engaging, fun, and personalized interactive experiences for every stage of the customer journey across multiple channels. Our customers are in control of their relationship with us and have a high level of trust and loyalty.
Employees	Target Persona / Stakeholder: COO (Chief Operating Officer) Service Productivity (COO) Increase customer satisfaction and revenue through customer insight and relationship management Imagine If … Imagine if your service representatives, field personnel, and self-service options could deliver a more pleasant and personalized service experience to customers, boosting customer satisfaction. Current State We do not have timely access to the information or insight we need to effectively provide and sell services. We are losing customers to providers that offer more efficient and personalized experiences. We are unable to collate customer information spread throughout our organization, or to quickly exchange information with each other. Desired Future State We have a 360 view of our customers, supported by analytics, that helps us provide the most appropriate services, and predict those that may be needed in the future. Our employees have the flexibility, mobility, and tools they need to work more effectively, increasing employee satisfaction. We have reduced the time our reps need to spend with customers by using efficient workflows and enabling customer self-service using chat bots. We collaborate throughout the organization to provide service, resolve issues, and identify opportunities for increasing revenue.	Target Persona/Stakeholder: CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer) Frictionless Collaboration for Employees Increase employee productivity and collaboration by enabling an agile workplace to create an environment for spontaneous innovation Imagine If … Imagine if employees were able to collaborate across all organizational boundaries, creating agile teams that leverage knowledge and excellence from anywhere in the business to deliver impact and innovate at scale Current State We make it difficult for employees to work outside the siloes of their respective areas in the organization. Our employees are not able to share information and content with freedom within the organization or with external parties. We are unable to translate individual knowledge to institutional knowledge and expertise. We do not enable employees to freely share ideas and innovate at the coalface of the business. Desired Future State Our employees have the flexibility, mobility, and tools they need to work more effectively, increasing employee satisfaction and productivity. We collaborate throughout the organization to resolve issues, identify opportunities for increasing revenue, share ideas and innovate. Our employees freely share information and content across organizational boundaries whilst protecting and securing sensitive information. We automatically identify and harvest knowledge, content and expertise and dynamically connect teams and individuals to create reuse of best practice.
Operations	Target Persona / Stakeholder: COO (Chief Operating Officer)Customer Insights Better understand customers, reduce churn, and market with insight.Imagine If … Imagine if you could better understand customer sentiment, predict when churn is likely, and create an insightful strategy to increase customer satisfaction and decrease churn. Current State We don’t have the information we need about our customers to effectively offer them the services and solutions they need. We cannot predict when customers may be near to switching providers, and our customer churn is high. We do not have the capabilities to integrate, store, process or analyze the customer data we have from many sources. We don’t have enough relevant and timely insight to improve our strategies, processes, or customer connection. Desired Future State We can manage the customer data our business needs to reveal effective ways to satisfy our customers and reduce churn. We can easily integrate data from different sources cutting across customer history, preferences, and social activity. We have the analytical and machine learning capabilities we need to supply relevant products and provide excellent service. We have the customer insight necessary to support customer interactions with representatives, or through self-service options, such as chat bots.	Target Persona: COO (Chief Operating Officer)Infrastructure as a Service Evolve IT and Network infrastructure to the hybrid cloud to take advantage of cloud scale and agilityImagine If … Imagine if you could shift all your infrastructure to a hybrid cloud environment, creating agility and operational efficiency through automation of service creation and managementCurrent State We have expensive legacy IT infrastructure which constrains the implementation of new IT applications. We have vendor specific monolithic network infrastructure that is expensive to buy and maintain and cannot be easily integrated. Our operational staff are burdened with many manual tasks and cannot consistently meet SLAs for service creation or issue resolution. Our business is frustrated at not being able to meet customer expectations and demand. Desired Future State We have migrated from legacy infrastructure to cloud enabled hybrid infrastructure that provides agility, speed, scalability and cost savings. We are able to partner with many telecoms providers and app developers to build our own network infrastructure in the cloud. We have significant levels of automation in our operational environments and our operational staff can focus on higher order tasks and projects. We have become a partner to our business stakeholders and are able to deliver needed infrastructure at scale with agility.
Products		Target Persona / Stakeholder: CPO (Chief Product Officer) Ecosystem Enablement Move from an “own the product” focus to a “platform and ecosystem” focus to enable new complex business models and revenue streams. Imagine If … Imagine if we could create an extensive open digital ecosystem by using multiple platforms such as IoT, Blockchain, 5G, etc. to operate and monetize new digital services Current State We are caught up in the traditional communications service provider business model with its heavy reliance on basic connectivity services. Our products and services are monolithic and we need to rely on traditional bundling to differentiate. We are not open and are not able to expose our own products, services and capabilities for use by 3rd parties. We do not create partnerships and have a go-it-alone culture. Future State We develop new business models of any type and complexity with multiple partners to serve a diverse set of customers across various industries We create digital products and services within the broader ecosystem using multiple platforms We have the analytical and machine learning capabilities we need to supply relevant insights and predictions from across the ecosystem. We create partnerships with speed and agility at scale to enable diverse ecosystems where we partner at any level of the value chain.

Focus on Creating New Compelling, Integrated Experiences for Customers and Employees

Taking a look back helps really see whether you are advancing your space or simply treading water and trying to keep up with the Joneses (are the Joneses even still in business?)

Digital Transformation efforts can start to blur together, especially, if you start falling into the trap of spending all your energy on digital optimization or focused on digitizing your operating model.

That’s table stakes. That’s more like “backlog burndown”. It’s “below the line”.

It’s necessary, but insufficient.

To actually move the needle, you need to think in terms of “value up”. You need to think in terms of “above the line”.

You need to create new experiences for your customers and employees. (Note a key tip from Richard Branson is that if you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your customers.)

Win the Future by Creating Raving Fans Today

So how is that Net Promoter Score of yours doing? Do you customers and employees rave about you to others?

Word-of-Mouth marketing is alive and well, and it works both ways to help you spiral up or spiral down.

Imagine shipping high value scenarios and experiences and making them real to engage and delight customers and to empower employees to innovate better, faster, and easier.

You win the future by creating raving fans today.

Your raving fans should be both your employees and your customers, otherwise, that’s how you suffer from and participate in the Great Resignation.

How long does any great company last without great employees?

Call to Action

Practice putting together the “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation for your industry.
Inform your “Big Picture” from the Current State of pains and needs in your industry. Collect real trends, stories, and insights of Digital Transformation to make it real.
Inform your “Big Picture” with the Future State of desired outcomes and aspirations in your industry. Find inspirational and aspirational stories and borrow from other industries to cross-pollinate ideas. Sometimes your best breakthroughs are only an industry away.

Best Digital Transformation Books
Dream Big, Start Small
The 3 R’s Framework for Digital Transformation
The CEO Pattern for Digital Transformation Explained
How To Use Imagine If to Innovate Better
Digital Transformation Explained
How I Created Trends and Insight for Satya Nadella
How Satya Nadella Transformed Microsoft
How To Use Stories to Create the Future
What is Digital Transformation?

Drive Digital Transformation with the “Big Picture” (The ‘’Bird’s-Eye View”)

You Can Disrupt Any Industry

Business Before Technology

Better Digital Transformation Starts with Bold Ambitions

Example “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation for an Industry

You Can Evolve Your Digital Transformation Year by Year

Focus on Creating New Compelling, Integrated Experiences for Customers and Employees

Win the Future by Creating Raving Fans Today

Call to Action

You Might Also Like

About JD Meier

How To Create the Big Picture for Digital Transformation

Drive Digital Transformation with the “Big Picture” (The ‘’Bird’s-Eye View”)

You Can Disrupt Any Industry

Business Before Technology

Better Digital Transformation Starts with Bold Ambitions

Example “Big Picture” of Digital Transformation for an Industry

You Can Evolve Your Digital Transformation Year by Year

Focus on Creating New Compelling, Integrated Experiences for Customers and Employees

Win the Future by Creating Raving Fans Today

Call to Action

You Might Also Like

About JD Meier

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