Difference in Perception

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Feb 3

The way we perceive digital transformation can significantly influence its impact, much like the philosophical debate of whether the glass is half full or half empty. A GetSmarter survey reveals a telling divide: 35% see digital transformation as people-centric, focusing on human elements and culture, while 32% view it as tech-centric, emphasizing technological advancements.

That divide may sound small, but it’s large enough to derail entire programs. If people don’t agree on what transformation means, they will never agree on what success looks like. Confusion in definition leads to diffusion in direction.

Step 1: Establish a Shared Definition

Digital transformation isn’t a slogan; it’s a strategy. Every company needs one explicit definition that connects technology, people, and business outcomes. Without it, transformation becomes a moving target that no one can hit.

Start by asking three questions:

What are we actually trying to transform: our processes, our decisions, or our entire business model?
What does success look like in measurable, operational terms?
How will digital capabilities enable that outcome?

Keep it short enough to fit in a sentence but specific enough to guide investment and behavior. If it can’t guide a budget, it’s not a strategy.

Step 2: Simplify Until It’s Repeatable

Complexity kills momentum. If your digital vision can’t be explained in under thirty seconds, employees will fill in the blanks on their own, and each will fill them differently.

Every organization should create a Digital Transformation Statement that includes:

Objective: The measurable outcome you want to achieve.
Approach: The broad strategy to get there.
Enablers: The key technologies or capabilities making it possible.

Once defined, communicate it everywhere: in meetings, onboarding sessions, leadership updates, and town halls. Repetition builds understanding, and understanding builds trust.

If your managers can’t explain digital transformation without reading from a slide, you don’t have buy-in; you have compliance.

Step 3: Redefine as You Mature

Digital transformation must continuously evolve as an organization matures. The definition that once revolved around digitizing paper processes and automating workflows now expands to encompass intelligence, adaptability, and data-driven decision-making at scale. As companies progress, their focus shifts from transforming operations to transforming intelligence, changing how knowledge is generated, shared, and acted upon.

Artificial intelligence now sits at the center of this evolution. Where the first wave of transformation aimed to connect systems and digitize information, today’s frontier is about amplifying human intelligence and, increasingly, automating it. The goal is not just to make work digital but to make the enterprise smarter, capable of sensing, deciding, and improving itself continuously.

This expansion happens along three major dimensions:

Technology and Data Capabilities
The foundation of transformation shifts from data accessibility to data intelligence. Early efforts focused on integrating systems and establishing a single source of truth. Mature organizations build data platforms that continuously learn, using AI and analytics to interpret context, predict outcomes, and guide action. Technology evolves from being a set of tools to becoming a cognitive layer that drives insight, adaptability, and automation across every business function.
Business Model and Value Delivery
The impact of digital transformation increasingly extends beyond efficiency gains. As data becomes an asset and AI a differentiator, companies rethink how they deliver and capture value. Business models evolve from selling products or services to offering outcomes and insights. Digital transformation becomes less about optimizing internal processes and more about reimagining customer relationships, experiences, and revenue models in a world driven by intelligence.
Organizational Structure and Decision Making
Transformation maturity also redefines how decisions are made and who makes them. Organizations shift from hierarchical decision models to distributed, data-empowered ones. AI-assisted analytics provide the information and confidence for decisions to be made closer to where the work happens. This requires new skills, governance models, and cross-functional collaboration. The most advanced organizations treat data and intelligence as shared infrastructure, not departmental property, enabling faster, more unified decision making.

When viewed through these three dimensions, digital transformation becomes far more than a technology initiative. It becomes an evolving capability that redefines how a company operates, competes, and learns. The organizations that thrive are those that continually refine their definition of transformation to align with these expanding frontiers, using intelligence not just to react to change but to shape it.

Step 4: Align Perceptions Through Ongoing Engagement

Alignment isn’t achieved once. It’s maintained through consistent communication, shared learning, and honest feedback. Transformation without dialogue turns strategy into noise.

Three practical actions:

Build digital fluency. Every role, from operator to executive, should understand how digital tools affect performance and decision-making. Fluency is not coding; it’s comprehension.
Share progress relentlessly. Communicate what’s working, what’s not, and what was learned. Transparency builds credibility and engagement.
Listen as much as you announce. Solicit input from those doing the work. If they don’t believe in the change, it will not last.

If people have to guess what’s changing, leadership stopped communicating months ago.

The Bottom Line

The definition of digital transformation is often like that glass of water in the classic half-full, half-empty debate. Everyone is looking at the same thing, yet they see something entirely different. One person sees a technology initiative, another sees a cultural change, and someone else sees a business reinvention. None of them are wrong, but if they are not aligned, progress slows, priorities clash, and transformation loses its force.

The lesson is simple: how you perceive transformation shapes how you pursue it. When organizations share a clear and unified understanding, every investment, conversation, and decision gains direction. When they don’t, even the best strategies feel fragmented.

Digital transformation succeeds when perception becomes shared vision. It happens when people across functions, disciplines, and hierarchies see the same glass and agree not only on how full it is, but what they are going to do with what’s inside.