'Seven PS' to help businesses drive digital transformation

A truly great customer experience is what customers expect and is a critical ingredient for any business. At the heart of delivering on that expectation is digital capability. Customers today seek efficient, frictionless, always-on solutions in all aspects of their lives and improving digital capabilities through digital transformation is key to achieving that.

Digital transformation is how we give our customers what they need. At Manulife, our ambition is to be the most digital, customer-centric global company in our industry. And that’s where a strong approach to transformation is critical.

Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.

Transformation tends to get over-used as an expression, it’s much more than that. To transform a business takes a lot of planning and hard work. Simply telling someone, much less an entire organisation to change, achieves little. In fact, it may even to do the opposite and create resistance to change. The reality is that to really change, it needs to come from a desire to change–from top to bottom and side to side.

Leveraging my career experience, I am the author of an approach to deliver digital transformation called the “Seven Ps”. With proven success across multiple organisations, this approach is also proving successful for us at Manulife. This article will look at each of the Ps and the role they play in the transformation process.

Purpose provides clarity for your team. At Manulife, we have one mission: decisions made easier, lives made better.

A clear and collective vision provides a sense of collaborative purpose about what the business is trying to achieve. Having an easy-to-understand purpose helps teams understand why they are doing what they do every day–why they are creating, experimenting, and delivering and how this ties back to the business purpose. It helps them understand the end-goal and where they fit in the process to achieving it. The key to success in driving purpose lies in the belief and commitment to the purpose from top executives in the organisation. It should underpin their strategic thinking and actions, as they lead by example, not being afraid to try something new, and not being afraid to pivot when a different course is the better course.

This is about creating guidelines for delivery. It’s not intended to be a rulebook, rather, it provides guardrails. The goal is never to stifle innovation. If you were to review the delivery across your organisation, could you define a list of principles that if followed, would lead to change and ultimately transformation?

A guiding principle could be agility – creating a feedback loop by developing, testing and learning constantly. Perhaps your organisation wants the value exchange to be based on delivering world class quality driven by data, analytics and insights. Other guiding principles I’ve used include customer experience driven; minimise single point dependencies – both people and technology; long term vision, short term delivery with KPI measures; decouple our technology by creating modular, integrated solutions architecture.

Similar to the constant articulation of purpose, the principles you define should underpin everything the organisation does, and the strategic and delivery decisions made.

These principles must be agnostic of products, channels, departments, and technology solutions.

Once you start to build up your foundation of principles, then bring it back to the purpose – the Why.

By bringing it back to the Why, the purpose has clarity. That clarity will allow teams to be aligned and self-empowered, not needing constant approval from those above them. This is the foundation for an agile, iterative, transformational culture needed to create change.

Prioritisation is one of the most difficult steps, as its success requires a top-down focus from senior leaders to determine, in order, what’s best overall for the organisation, and not just their area of responsibility. This requires considering the entire customer journey, end-to-end, and delivery across every function to support that journey.

Normally, most deliverables require input and subject matter expertise from many areas of the organisation to be completed successfully. Meaning that collaboration and teamwork are essential. This leads into the next couple of Ps, namely People and Process.

No surprise, an organisation’s people are the most important ingredient for change; people with the skills who buy into the purpose and principles and have a clear idea of the overall priorities. This will create the trigger for change.

People – if empowered, focussed and driven with a purpose of why, are clear on the what, and understand how they’re delivering – those people will move mountains. At Manulife, our mission or purpose, can also be translated to making our customers’ lives better every day.

This in part drives our culture, and culture should never be underestimated. In my view this is without doubt the (not so) secret sauce. Measuring culture allows the ability to make tangible what appears intangible.

By measuring organisational culture, people’s current and desired future state can be quantified, made real. Cultural visibility drives behavioural change. Using culture measuring tools can provide areas of focus and change. With that buy-in, the whole undoubtedly becomes greater than the sum of its parts. A good culture that empowers, backed by a meaningful purpose and clarity on how to drive transformation, along with an understanding of what they are doing, will deliver powerful results from your teams.

There is certainly wisdom in the proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

With the purpose, principles, priorities, and people in place, what about the actual process for delivery? How we deliver is critical, defining the processes that we follow as a team to make our purpose a reality. It’s very clear that processes for delivery guide action. A key part of any process lies with the culture, which should encourage people to ask, question, and clarify in a safe environment to ensure they understand the purpose, principles, and priority of delivery. If those involved with delivery don’t know, they should both be accountable and responsible for gaining that clarification.

When assessing performance, what gets measured is what gets focus and therefore driven to completion. Celebration of successes when performance is met, and a culture of gratitude are essential. Of course, that doesn’t mean waiting until final completion. It should be a measurable, iterative process – all the milestones and accomplishments – through to the final delivery. At Manulife, we express gratitude in a number of ways. An example is Podium, our global recognition platform that enables colleagues at all levels across the globe to give and receive frequent, in the moment and authentic recognition. Combine this with processes and people that are measured (rewarded and applauded) for this iterative delivery – those people will be intrinsically motivated and driven. Especially if the priorities and principles they are following have been agreed upon and followed through by the leaders of the organisation.

The last of the seven Ps is Passion. Passion is vital. The author and public speaker Simon Sinek put it nicely: “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress, working hard for something we love is called Passion.”

Do what you love and love what you do. To transform, to really change, requires a desire – a Passion – to change. As a leader, inspire and motivate that in others. As a colleague, inspire and motivate that in those around you. Work together, collaborate, communicate – and you will see mountains be moved.

I'm hoping my strategy can provide you with a toolkit for leading digital transformation across your organisation. But always keep in mind, a toolkit is just that. Change must be done by people – your internal and external customers. Collaborate, communicate and the foundational shift of change will be created.