The single biggest factor driving societal and organisational development right now is digitalisation. It affects everything, from the daily rhythms of young children to the U.S. elections. To understand digitalisation, you must grasp the fundamental changes it brings to how we think and work. If you don’t, it turns into mere computerisation—doing the same things as before, but with computers. Often, that actually makes things worse. The topics on this page can be part of a lecture, a workshop, a text, a video, or a more formalised training.
Digitalisation vs. computerisation
When we copy processes, organisations, and working methods from the analogue world to the digital one, we can say that we have computerised. This often leads to disappointment and not the improvement we were promised. If, instead, we take advantage of the qualities that a digital context offers, we can create entirely new organisations, processes, and working methods. However, we need to understand that, for example, a meeting in Teams probably shouldn’t function in the same way as a meeting in a conference room.
Gates and the folders
When Bill Gates, in 1994, spoke about 'information at your fingertips,' he envisioned a world where all people would have all knowledge at their fingertips. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet is largely due to the way we organised our new digital world as a copy of the analogue one we know. When you see folders on the desktop of your computer screen, you’re looking at an unfortunate metaphor from the physical world—a metaphor that then makes it impossible to organise or work in any other way than in the physical world.
A new element
Running a business in a digital context is as different from what we’re used to as moving in water is compared to moving on land. Someone who tries to run in water can manage as long as it’s shallow, but once it reaches their knees, they realise that everything they know about moving quickly is useless. The crawl stroke isn’t a technique you learn on land. It’s the same here—we need to learn new methods, things that have no parallel to our previous ways of working.
Inside-out becomes outside-in
In a world where the organisation has a knowledge advantage, all important information flows 'inside-out,' including internal communications from management to employees. In a world where the external environment is richer in information than the organisation, all important information will flow outside-in, including from employees to management.
Knowledge becomes understanding
The difference between knowing and understanding can be described like this: Someone who knows the capitals of Europe gains no benefit from that knowledge in South America. But someone who understands Europe's capitals—meaning they understand why they are located where they are—can also make assumptions about where the capital of Ecuador might be. As our knowledge advantages decrease, the demand for understanding grows ever greater.
Function becomes situation
We are used to delivering some form of solution, product, or service. That solution is judged based on quality, price, performance, etc. But increasingly, we are being judged instead on relevance—how well does it fit the external situation? Is it the right time, right place, and right design for the specific situation the customer or user is in? We will become more and more situation-dependent and be required to have an ever-greater understanding of the situation.
One-to-many becomes many-to-many
In an analogue/physical world, a newspaper can have many readers, but a reader has only one newspaper. Similarly, we are used to a manager having many subordinates, but a subordinate having only one manager. In a digital world, this is no longer the case. We are moving from pyramid-shaped hierarchies to networks that, if drawn, look like spheres.
Many places at once
In an analogue/physical world, a person, a text, or a resource can only be in one place at a time. In a digital world, it is entirely possible for an object, a text, a resource, or even a person to exist in many places at once.
Specialisation becomes complexity
That a petrol station now sells hot dogs, diesel, bouquets of flowers, and a café latte is because Taylor's truth about the benefits of specialisation no longer holds. Instead, the one who meets as many needs as possible, given the situation the customer or user is in, is rewarded. We are moving from specialisation to complexity.
Long-term planning becomes agility
A rapidly changing world requires that we, as organisation leaders, can be reactive and respond to those changes. The very underlying factors that make the environment changeable also enable us to manage even large organisations on a week-to-week basis instead of year by year. We can become agile, if we recognise the need for it.
Individualism becomes communities
More and more of our understanding of society and organisations revolves around relationships between people rather than functions within them. You could say that sociology, rather than psychology, forms the foundation for areas like HR work or leadership. This also means that groups of people—communities—are more important building blocks than individual people, whether we are trying to understand a school, an organisation, or a society.
Social climate change
The exclusion experienced by those who didn’t acquire digital identity verification, a mobile phone, or internet access—and who, as a result, now in their old age can’t perform banking tasks or manage contacts with the Social Insurance Agency—risks affecting many more people on a much larger scale as digitalisation accelerates. This can be prevented, but we likely need to act fairly quickly.