Tag: Digital Transformation

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Reflections on HBR Technology Must Reads, Stitch Fix Case Study

Reference Case Study: Stitch Fix’s CEO on Selling Personal Style to the Mass Market

I’m not going to re-hash the article, you can go read it yourself, that’s why am providing the link, what I am going to do is highlight the things I found interesting, the first two weren’t technology related, but the third one was and the fourth one was more personal.

My first thought was who shops that much and/or needs that many clothes? Now, to be fair, I’ve never been much of a shopper, I typically only buy things when I need to replace something that I’ve worn out. There were a few exceptions to this after I moved to Berlin and realised I’d gotten rid of a few things that I really should have kept, and bought things to replace them, but mostly, I just replace things that have worn out.

My other thought was around the fit/sizing. I have a terrible time finding things that fit the way I want them too, even when I know my measurements and buy according to the sizing chart, so I end up in a store/stores trying things on, who needs the hassle of online shopping and sending stuff back?

But, turning to the technology, that part was interesting, allowing for the fact that I am not even remotely in the target market for such a service. The fact that they have used AI/Machine learning to bring the fashion industry into the 21st century is interesting. It is all about understanding the customer-base/target market and the nuances of the sector and knowing what to do with the data once it’s collected. 

Finally, and more personally, I liked that Katrina Lake, the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, when she didn’t see anyone else doing anything to address what she perceived (rightly) as an opportunity in the market place, decided to do it herself. This sounds like something I would do, and in fact have done, not that I have started a successful online business, but I have stepped into the void and provided leadership and guidance when there was none; I have done things that I thought “someone else” should be doing/responsible for but they weren’t interested or didn’t perceive the need. 

Those are my thoughts (quick and cursory as they may be) on the second article/case study in the HBR book, “On AI, Analytics, and the New Machine Age”.

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Reflecting on the week that was: November 9, 2019

I have had some interesting conversations this past week, both personal and professional and some that were in between. I was told that I was a pioneer, and inspirational. Being called a pioneer was new, so I particularly liked that.

After years of being asked, “what I do” I finally figured it out (I have another blog about that), which was very satisfying and revealing. Now that I know what I do, I can much more easily tell people, and explain why they need me to help them be successful with their digital transformation project (or other big, unwieldy initiatives).

However, something someone said, in one the conversations is still bouncing around inside of my head: they said, that people want to know how to break-through the shell of what they’ve learned/been taught. Which is a noble thought; an admirable goal.

But what strikes me is that they want a shortcut. They want a course, or a checklist, that when you do these things you will have become aware, you will have dropped your mask, you will have unlearned the negative patterns you have learned. And certainly, there are retreats you can go on, books you can read, therapy you can do, coaching or mentoring you can get, and they all help move along the path, but there are no shortcuts. It takes as long as it takes, it happens when it happens and even when it happens, it continues to evolve; it never stops, you never arrive. Get used to it.
We have been taught that if you take the course, get the certification, finish your “to do” list, that all will be right with the world, that we will be successful when that happens. But it’s a big, fat lie.

You define success, the same way you define happiness. Looking for external approval and validation is only going to make you miserable.

What is success for me? Having work that I like doing, working with people who trust and respect me, spending time with friends, painting, going to museums and art galleries, seeing art, going to jazz or classical music concerts, going for a walk in nature, people watching, allowing my mind to wander, spending time along (sometimes a lot of it), reading, watching movies, eating good food (especially with friends), connecting with people, sharing my story/experience, learning, experimenting. 

It has taken me a lot of time and effort to figure these things out, it’s not been easy, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. There are no shortcuts.

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What do I Do: the box I fit into

What do I do?

I get asked this question all the time; for years I have been asked this question. At the beginning of my career I could say I was an accounting student, or an accountant, and people understood this. However, the more education and experience I got, the more difficult it became to say precisely what I did. 

When I became self-employed, I used to say that I did knowledge management consulting, and I did, but people (mostly) didn’t understand what that meant, so I tried to explain. I could give examples of projects that I had done and the impact that it had had, and they sort of understood, but not really. They smiled and nodded and we moved onto another subject.

I have been self-employed for 16 years, my consulting practice has changed and evolved, the “how” of what I do has changed. I now incorporate artistic methods/thinking into what I do (the truth is, they was there all along, I just didn’t have a name for it, much like the agile, and design thinking practices I incorporated in to my methodology, without having a name for them either). But, honestly, no one cares about the “how”, they care about the results. 

What are my results? 

I stop you from failing with your big, unwieldy projects and programs. Your big, cross-functional, cross-organisational initiatives, that don’t neatly fit into a box. Those initiatives that have lots of stakeholders, lots of moving parts, lots of conflicting objectives. They have technology, they have processes, they have people.

Examples: One organisation recognised an ROI of 165%, while another was prevented from throwing out a million dollar (Cdn) IT investment and starting over.

In the current environment, these projects are called digital transformation, and up to 95% of them fail. When I first started, they were mostly called knowledge management, and somewhere around 50% of them failed. Certainly, one of the first KM projects I did had failed twice previously under different project managers, and I came along and did it using an iterative, collaborative approach (what might be called agile and design thinking now). Not only did I have a successful pilot with 100 people, but eventually had almost 7000 people using the platform, which increased to 10,000 on the momentum of what I had started even after I left the organisation. 

Since going out on my own, I have helped other organisations do this—well, at least the ones that trusted me. There were some that were uncomfortable with my cross-functional, collaborative, iterative approach, and so shelved my work, which is their prerogative. 

My success is built on experience, trial and error, persistence, collaboration, communication, curiosity, critical thinking, leadership, and a willingness to admit that I don’t know the answer but I’ll find out. There is no course that teaches these things, only experience. 

Courses and certifications teach theory, they teach best practices. But as anyone who knows about best practices will tell you, best practices are dependant on the organisation, the situation, the culture, the people, the technology, and the processes. Best practices from one situation/organisation will not necessarily give the same results somewhere else. 

Experience takes best practices and asks the question, how do we take that and make it work here, in this environment, with this technology, with these people?

What do I do?

I ask the questions, and I successfully plan and execute big, unwieldy projects.