Christian D. Evans Journey Podcast: What Is Digital Transformation & Why Your Business Needs It: Unlock Your True Potential!

Greg Kihlström was featured on the Journey with Christian D. Evans Podcast. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Unlock The Full Potential of Your Business 

Stuck in the same old business model? That's the old way of thinking. With Digital Transformation, you can finally unlock your potential by becoming a competitor on a global scale.

Digital Transformation gives you tools to fully transition into a digital-first business and weather the rapidly changing market.

Stop struggling to keep up with new brands and constantly match their strategies; use Digital Transformation to move your business forward. 

Digital transformation is creating a business based on digital technology. The term is broad and covers many different dimensions. This podcast will cut through the jargon and make it easy to understand what digital transformation means in a specific context.

They have a clear vision and know exactly how to get started on their journey towards a disruptive new way of producing and selling products or services.

Don't be left behind! Listen to this one of a kind conversation between Christian D. Evans and Greg Kihlstrom.

Keep up with the competition, create unique offers and stand out amongst your competition with these simple but effective tips.

Greg's Advice: Why Prioritization Is Critical For Digital Transformation  

Greg Kihlstrom: So you need to have a way that you prioritize, and you know what I'm saying? Now I wish I had had this when I owned my marketing agency. Like I did not. It's that, that's one of those hindsight moments that I have, but this is what I do a lot. And you know, this works for, I mean, regardless of the organization's size, you know, a Five-person organization.

It could be a five 50,000 person organization. You've got to have a way to prioritize efforts and understand what's essential to the business. And so some things maybe, you know, personally or emotionally significant, but if they don't drive the metrics that matter to the company and those, those could be very.

Based on, you know, based on what the organization is, but find a way to do that and do it consistently. And then the second thing is to start small and, you know, think about pilot projects, think about, you know, small ways of making incremental progress instead of, you know, okay. Yeah, this will take us 12 months, but man, when we're done, this will be great.

Twelve months from now, your competition will be completely different, and your audience will want something different. You know we don't, we don't, nobody lives in a world where 12 months, you know, it can take 12 months to do and finish anything. You see, we've got to take it maybe in two-month increments or something like that or quarterly, or, you know, at the most.

So, you know, figure out what you can do to make some progress towards those goals? In a short amount of time and make sure you're doing the right things in those times.

Understanding The Need For The Implementation of Agile Methodology 

Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. And so just for context, as far as agile, you know, there are rigorous definitions of agile principles and scrum methodology and all those things. And that's not; I work with teams that do that, and I'm an agile coach. So I know that stuff, that's something I do for, for work.

Let's say what I'm talking about here, as far as really adopting an agile mindset is, I think a big misconception and, sort of a misnomer, for agile, is that you're reactive. And I don't, that, to me, that's a bad word as far as okay. Something happened. Let's change everything. You know, the word pivot to me.

I wouldn't say I like that word because it feels. I've done it before, and there's a good time to do it, but it feels reactive, and it doesn't feel right; it doesn't feel right to me. Agile is a scientific way of looking at things and, you know, looking at things like creating, creating a hypothesis, and the hypothesis doesn't need to be a big formula and algorithm.

It could be. I want to grow my audience by, you know, 5,000 people over six months. Okay, cool. Like that's a hypothesis test that iterates on that. Give it enough time, though, don't just say, okay, well, we tried this for a week. It didn't work. That's being reactive, you know, but give yourself, you know, give yourself enough time to test what you want to do to see if it's working.

If you need to change direction, by all means, do, but don't lose sight of that end goal. Your dreams don't change, or they don't need to change. They can vary, but you know that your plans don't need to change. So to me, I look at, as a, you know, scientific process of, let's say. To where we need to go, let's do it in small increments that we can course-correct along the way without significant change and completely undoing things and wasting time and reworking and all that kind of stuff.

Why Long-term Strategic Planning Is Crucial For Growth 

Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a common theme throughout all of them. I mean, every situation is very different.

I can't even talk about it; some of them are based on the, you know, the confidentiality, but I think that the real, the common thread is. Most of the time, stakeholders will want they'll understand what they want to achieve. The result. They'll think of it as a technology or, you know, basically a technology problem to solve, or if we buy the software solution or if we hire this company or, or something like that, what often, and almost always gets overlooked is if you don't get buy-in from your people.

First and foremost, like the people that are going to be doing the work and using that technology, managing those vendors, all of those things, you're not going to be successful. You may cry, check the box and get the project done, but it is not going to be successful either in the short-term or the long-term.

And I think that's tough. It's a callous thing because, you know, software and all that stuff are so expensive. You think, man, we're paying X, millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, whatever the case may be. Shouldn't that solve all our problems? Well, you know, it's the people that are, they're going to be the most significant benefit to it, or they're going to be the biggest drawback to it, depending on how you approach it.