Making a start on digitalness – digital behaviours are simple but hard

Slightly warily, I am considering a series of posts on one theme. The theme is ‘making a start on digitalness’. I am wary because I have started this kind of project before and lost momentum. I am considering another attempt for this topic. In drafting this idea as one post I became lost in notes and paragraphs and my thread became entangled. I think it is too complex for one piece. So. This might become a series.

The idea is borne from a growing sense that many teams and their leaders are peering over the garden fence at their neighbours and gazing in envy at their digitalness. In the learning world, this gaze is often directed further afield to more distant neighbourhoods. Nearby locales are more familiar and inspire less of this longing. This envy is not about technology.  I don’t see much coveting of our neighbours kit – we all have access to the technology and tools we (think we) need. It’s more of an admiration of the lifestyle.

Like anything valuable, making a start on being digital is hard and will require constant effort. I am taking it for granted that ‘being or becoming digital’ is desirable. It is possible not to try it. That route will guarantee irrelevance at some point, however. (I refer you to the inevitable YouTube “How to  do something or other” video which you did not make but everyone prefers to what you did make). So why not make a start?

If this does become a series, it will cover organising for digitalness, the culture of digitalness, working digitally and digital behaviours. This post is about the last one: behaviours. (Yes. These themes overlap – hence the entanglement).

It is also focused on making a start on digitalness not on an end state. This is because, in my experience, digital teams and organisations don’t fix at a certain point. Something happens, mainly to users, that requires a response. By definition, something has changed. This is one of the reasons why it is hard work. Like all the best jobs, it does not freeze in form and repeat.

Here are some hallmark behaviours that I believe a digital team and the members of a digital team will exhibit. These are the behaviours I would start and practice.

A digital team will:

• Aways seek the user need – answer the “what’s in it for me?” question (the me being the user)
• Always seek and meet the user to find the user need – there is no substitute for direct knowledge
• Have a clear user focus – stakeholders are not front of the queue
• Have a good sense of the business needs (stakeholders are important but not front of the queue)
• Get something in front of users quickly (until the user has experienced it, there is no reliable way of judging whether it is any good or not)
• Not wait for the finished article (until the user has experienced it, there is no reliable way of judging whether it is finished or not)
• Focus on producing the minimum product /service/content from which they can learn about genuine user response (until the user has experienced it, there is no way of judging whether it is enough or not)
• Seek data data to understand user behavior – don’t move unless you can measure (not ‘track’ – that is something else)
• Observe – see what happens when you do move
• Respond quickly to observations – change what you did last time and
• Observe again…
• Learn and want to learn – the data and the testing are all focused on improved understanding and then on an improved outcome
• Reflect on experience – digital teams (agile teams in particular through the sprint retrospective) will find time to discuss and assess recent performance
• Communicate frequently and directly throughout their work – Slack is a favourite of digital professionals for this reason
• Share information routinely and openly – Slack is a favourite of digital professionals for this reason
• Organise themselves quickly to focus on goals – the daily stand up is one of the rituals to set next steps and share recent activity
• Seek expertise to solve a problem (and share the result) – Stack Overflow is a towering monument to this behaviour

One interesting observation as I scratched out that list: digital teams are learning teams (this is an element of the culture of digitalness which will form the heart of another post is this possible series). The focus on improvement requires equal attention to what has and has not worked, adjusting for both outcomes. Progress is made through this learning.

All of these behaviours signal organisational traits, ways of working and cultural patterns. To be properly embedded, they need those other factors to be in place too. To be true to the title, however, I think we can all start with these behaviours, individually and collectively, try them and make progress towards more effective digital working. The role of the Product Manager – the missing link in developing helpful learning technologies – is an excellent mechanism for gaining and sustaining momentum with these changes in any team.

As with all these successful digital endeavours – these things are simple but hard.

[Worthy of another post in the series?].