Imagine that your company disrupts your entire industry. You quickly and unexpectedly bypass the competition and establish a lasting leadership position. Internally, you’re recognized as the leader who guided your organization through a breakthrough after years of struggle—the one who made the decisions that led to a breakthrough leap forward.
On the journey to growth, most business leaders are fixated on tactics they don’t fully understand and trends they can’t control. To them, progress and execution are the keys to reaching their goals. What they often miss is that explosive growth doesn’t come from doing more, trying harder, making incremental improvements, or micromanaging their team.
The real game-changers are leaders who understand that achieving breakthrough results requires making high-impact moves that propel their organization forward—dramatically, without the slow, grinding effort they usually experience.
When you break away from the common practices and ingrained habits that aren’t working, you’ll transform your entire organization in ways that are remarkably simple, efficient, and effective. Meanwhile, your colleagues and competitors are either banging their heads against a wall or watching in awe.
Digital transformation strategy starts with a personal transformation strategy
Technology is reshaping your business. To succeed today, you need to adapt and be ready to navigate both the opportunities and the risks these changes bring. Whether you’re ready for them or not.
But here’s the thing… technology isn’t transformation in itself—technology is only sparking the need for transformation. This is true internally and externally in your marketing, operations, IT, and beyond.
However, transformation, particularly digital transformation for the sake of this article, isn’t for the faint of heart. Transformation requires unconventional thinking, embracing the unknown, and relying on unseen forces at play.
That’s why I believe your digital transformation actually begins with personal transformation. If you’re not a transformational leader, you won’t build a transformational team—and the result is that you won’t have a transformational business.
It starts with you, yes you. If you’re fascinated by this unpopular opinion, and transformation sounds like something you need to do, I wrote the rest of the article for you. Let’s keep going.
Expect change as a constant
As a child, my grandparents could never keep up with how quickly I changed. Every time they saw me, they were surprised—even though I lived near them, saw them regularly, and stayed at their house for weeks each year. But each visit, I had a new favorite meal and a completely different fashion sense.
From as early as I can remember, I’ve been the type of person who constantly reinvents, reimagines, and refreshes myself. I experiment with new ideas and go “all-in” on the things I love.
As a transformational leader, you’re going to trigger change constantly in your life and your organization. In fact, that’s your job (more on this below). Your job is to innovate, disrupt, and advance the vision—and cause others discomfort along the way so they grow in their ability to innovate, disrupt, and advance the vision with you.
It was Howard Shultz who wisely said, “In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we’re made of.”
What you and your team will discover in the process of change is growth. You’ll unexpectedly uncover an entirely new set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that you didn’t know you had.
Take giant leaps
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
In most organizations, everyone around you is repelled by risk and nauseated by the idea of embarking into uncharted waters. It’s unconventional, not easily connected to what most would see as common sense.
But it’s more natural than some might think. In Taking the Quantum Leap, Fred Alan Wolf explains a “quantum leap” as, “the explosive jump that a particle of matter undergoes in moving from one place to another.”
Don’t allow others around you, and their limiting beliefs about what they are capable of, keep you from taking transformational steps toward your goals. In fact, if you pave a path, they might follow.
When I want to achieve something new, I don’t take giant leaps toward my goal. I’m not satisfied with small, 1% improvements day after day. I want to make progress, quickly, toward any goal I set my eyes on. The result of this approach is inspiration—others begin to follow along because even if they think I’m crazy, at least it’s interesting.
By taking giant leaps (sometimes in faith), you’ll open up others’ cabinets of curiosity and lead the way toward the future you want to see.
Mind your mindset
As a leader, you have the ability to multiply your personal performance and achieve the goals you’re responsible for. Not only that, but you can create exponential growth and transformation in your organization—achievements that might seem unimaginable right now.
But so far, you haven’t been achieving your full potential. And honestly, neither have I. I know this because, according to the National Science Foundation, on average, 80% of both your and my thoughts are negative and 95% are repetitive. Dang.
It’s time to adopt a new way of thinking and behavior. Especially about growth and performance—an approach that succeeds not by playing it safe, copying the competition, or mitigating risk, but by reimagining yourself and your organization constantly, disrupting your industry like a startup, and embracing culture change to grow.
And you’re going to do it all without fixating on flawless execution, tactics, trends, or tech.
After reading this article, you’re going to do it like you’ve done it a million times before—without worrying about overpreparation or covering every base between the start and the finish.
You’re just going to succeed.
Key principles of a successful digital transformation strategy
Does digital transformation sound like an epic adventure? It should, because it is.
But you’re probably wondering…
- What strategies do I need to consider?
- What steps do I need to take?
- Is this even possible with my current team, in my organization?
Yes, it is. But it will require you to start by understanding and adopting a unique and rather uncommon set of principles. Here are the five core principles to help you succeed and thrive in your transformation.
Principle 1: Envision a fascinating future
“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” —Various
I can often predict how successful a project, initiative, or goal will be by how far into the future a leader is thinking.
Most business leaders, by default, opt for short timelines and quick wins. They’re chasing shiny objects and making impulse decisions on ideas that may look flashy but lack depth. Too harsh? I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not. All too often, leaders opt for small dreams, and as a result, they get small results.
My vision for Structure was scary
I remember very clearly the hours I spent lost and scared, dreaming and piecing together how to create the future we’re living in today. And when I say lost and scared, I mean truly lost and scared. Structure is the result of at least three failed ventures, but it’s also something I set my eyes on years ago, determined to bring it to life.
Starting a consulting company was terrifying. I’d never done it before, it seemed complex, and I had no idea how I’d carve out a unique, ownable space in the market. I knew that building a valuable consulting firm would be a long, difficult journey.
Along the way, there were people who couldn’t make sense of my vision. Yet, there were also those who believed I would succeed.
The goals I set 10 years ago? We’ve blown them out of the water.
If you’d asked me back then if I’d have 25 team members spread across the country working on nearly 100 active client projects, I’d have thought you were crazy. But here we are!
In fact, I recently shared my next 10-year vision with someone, and they told me, “I truly believe that you’re going to achieve the ambitious goals you’ve set for Structure.”
Hell yeah I will 🙂
Are my goals for the next decade also scary? You bet they are. They seem nearly impossible.
But that’s why I love them. I have no idea how we’re going to get from here to there, but we’re going to try. And in the process, we’re going to evolve into a completely new version of ourselves that’s so much better.
Think in decades, not days
Here’s what I’d encourage you to consider: “What could you achieve in the next decade?”
Instead of beating yourself up after six months or even five years of trying, why not start with a decade-long commitment? Set a goal that could only be achieved with a decade of dedication.
The reason is simple: if you’re planning in years or months, you’re not thinking big enough.
Commit to a goal that you’re not sure you can achieve in 10 years, but know that if you showed up every day and dedicated yourself, you would win.
Let me say that again: set a 10-year goal that you’re unsure you can achieve. That’s where the magic happens.
If you’re looking to grow and scale your business in a significant way that allows you to bypass the competition and take a leadership position in your market, you have to think in decades, not days.
Bigger is actually easier
When you think in decades, not days, you can detach from present constraints and imagine what’s possible if you weren’t limited by current resources, processes, or market conditions.
It allows you to create a vision that is future-focused and innovation-driven, which is essential for long-term success in the transformation age.
Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy explore this concept in 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less. The idea is that aiming for 10x growth (read: decades) instead of 2x growth (read: days) forces you to think fundamentally differently.
When you aim for 2x, you’re likely to optimize your current processes, tweak existing strategies, and stay within the confines of what you’re already doing. This approach limits creativity and innovation because it doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone or challenge your assumptions.
However, when you aim for 10x, the scale of the goal requires a radical shift in thinking. You can’t just tweak what you’re currently doing; you have to rethink the entire approach.
Bingo! That’s what digital transformation strategy is all about. Rethink, reinvent, refresh, and recreate your present based on your vision for the future.
This kind of thinking naturally leads to more innovative solutions, as it encourages you to explore entirely new possibilities, think outside the box, and break free from current limitations. The necessity of letting go of what doesn’t work, focusing on what truly matters, and leveraging high-impact strategies becomes more apparent, making the process more liberating and energizing.
Small visions scatter transformations
In Tactics to Transformation: Why Integrated Digital Marketing is the Key to Achieving Big Results, I pointed out that three of the top five critical errors in digital transformation stem from having a vision that’s too small.
It’s easy for leaders to get caught up in the day-to-day grind (myself included), focusing on what’s urgent instead of what’s truly important. But when we aim low, we limit our company’s potential—and that’s a big reason why 70% of companies fail to pull off a successful transformation.
Here’s what I’ve learned: To drive real change, you’ve got to balance today’s demands with tomorrow’s dreams.
Yes, daily tasks and urgent issues will always be there, but they shouldn’t overshadow your long-term vision. The key is making time for strategic thinking—whether that means stepping away from the office, attending a workshop, or just blocking out time on your calendar to focus on the future. By doing this, you’re shaping the future instead of the future shaping you.
And let’s be real—transformation requires more than just a shift in focus. It’s about changing your mindset from reactive to proactive, where you trust in what’s possible down the road more than you cling to what’s comfortable right now.
This means taking risks, embracing uncertainty, and building a culture that values long-term wins over short-term gains. If you want to see real growth, both in your business and your life, you’ve got to find security in future opportunities rather than sticking to the status quo.
At the end of the day, the path to digital transformation success is all about thinking boldly and being willing to step into the unknown.
Principle 2: Disrupt Your Space Through Uniqueness
To have an effective digital transformation strategy, dreaming big about the future isn’t enough—you need to stand out from the crowd. And not just stand out—you need to disrupt the very assumptions people hold about your industry.
That might sound daunting, but don’t worry—it’s more achievable than you think.
Being unique enough to disrupt an industry, or even just a marketing meeting, is challenging, especially because true uniqueness requires a deep understanding of your purpose. But no matter what your purpose is, there are foundational principles you can adopt to discover, practice, and showcase what makes your company unique.
This is how you truly transform your market.
Disrupt like a startup
A typical startup is making things up as it goes along. While this approach has its downsides—especially in terms of sustainability and resilience—we’re not talking about scaling successes just yet. We’re talking about disrupting and innovating.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, believes startups often beat big companies because large companies are slow, lack conviction, and doubt new ideas before they succeed.
He cites Facebook’s success over Google in social networking, despite Google’s resources, as an example. Initially, social networking was seen as a fad, and even when it proved profitable, big companies still underestimated it. By the time they recognized its value, it was too late.
Zuckerberg suggests that internal skepticism and lower prioritization for new ideas by higher-ups often cause big companies to miss opportunities, even when they have the advantage.
You see, startups excel at one thing: they move on ideas quickly and before they’re ready.
Established companies could benefit greatly from adopting this mindset if they want to transform. In fact, if you’re not a startup, you’ll have to adopt this approach to drive transformation. It’s not optional; it’s a requirement.
As Price Pritchett, a well-respected psychologist and business leader advises in You2, “A person could make a career out of laying the groundwork to do something really big. Please understand—you don’t ‘prepare’ for a quantum leap. You make it, and then fine-tune your approach.”
When leaders and companies make moves before they’re ready, they disrupt both their internal culture and their external environment. Both are critical because external action always stems from your internal culture—not the competitive environment around you.
As I mentioned earlier, most leaders are fixated (read: fearful) on the situations and circumstances around them. They overlook the fact that the power to outperform the market is already within their organization.
The proven formula for disruption, uniqueness, and innovation comes from the unique makeup of your ever-changing culture, customers, and collaborators.
Look inside for opportunity
Stop looking outside for opportunity. It’s already there—you just have to let it come out.
This concept hit me like a hammer a few years ago. Structure was hitting a growth ceiling. We had doubled our business from the previous year, yet I could sense we had stalled—worse than stalling, we were stagnating, and it was starting to stink.
Driven by old mindsets and habits, and a desire to be a competitive player in our market, I made decisions that inevitably made us look like everyone else. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were trying to compete with the outside market and I thought we were on the right track.
However, in the process, our value became increasingly generic and watered down.
It wasn’t until our team attended a ScaleFactor workshop that we realized what had happened. During the workshop, the founder, Josh Hotsenpiller, did what I least expected—he didn’t tell us how to compete better. He gave us ideas on how to be more unique!
While Josh’s team helped us redefine our offer and sharpen our focus, the biggest takeaway was this: stop suppressing your true vision, values, and voice. Let them out in the marketplace.
In less than 12 months, our team and revenue tripled. Hiring became easier, and our client relationships deepened. Why? Because we let our uniqueness shine, and it disrupted the market. People are attracted to us because what we do is more interesting than anything else they’re seeing.
The 3 C’s of Uniqueness™
I’ve discovered that every organization has three components of uniqueness outside of their business model. In fact, no matter what your business model is, even the most common can stand out from the pack by leveraging their “uniqueness” in each of these three components.
I call these the 3 C’s of Uniqueness™:
1. Culture: Your culture is unique
The first thing you already have working for you is your company culture. What’s your vision? What are your values? What’s your voice?
As I told my team this week, “Enthusiasm is contagious, and so is the lack of it.”
If you’re enthusiastic about what you’re creating, your team will become enthusiastic. If your team is enthusiastic, your customers will be enthusiastic. And if your customers are enthusiastic, so will your collaborators.
If enthusiasm (aka passion) isn’t part of your culture, you, as a leader, need to take a long look in the mirror and revisit Principle 1: Envision a Fascinating Future.
2. Customers: Your customers are unique
The second thing that makes you unique is your customer base. They’re all unique individuals with different passions, personalities, and perspectives.
If they’re paying your company, you’re creating value for them. That means they like you… unless they have to pay you, but that’s another conversation. Ideally, they’re with you because they chose you.
How can you draw on their unique motivations and desires and integrate them as a part of your company and brand to innovate, disrupt, and stand out?
If you’re not already, let your customers shape you. Let that shaping continue to influence how you show up in your space.
3: Collaborators: Your collaborators are unique
Finally, you also have collaborators who bring uniqueness to your organization. Notice I didn’t say competitors—because we’re not looking to them to define who you are. They’re on the outside. We’re looking within for opportunities to become more of who you already are.
Your collaborators are the people who make your business model work. This could be your vendors, suppliers, distributors, influencers, or your board of directors.
Just as you allow your culture and customers to shape the uniqueness of your company, invite your collaborators to do the same. Encourage their personalities to shine and become a public part of your brand.
Principle 3: Focus on Ends Rather Than Means
Transactional vs. transformational leadership
What type of leader are you? In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell explains that there are really two types of leaders: transactional and transformational.
Most executives and entrepreneurs get trapped in transactional leadership. You know the drill—you bark orders, supervise a checklist, and reward or punish team members based on performance.
Transactional leaders tell their team how to do the work, check if they did it, and jump in to save the day if they didn’t. Unfortunately, this results in an underutilized team, an overworked leader, and a company that’s unable to reach its full potential.
Transformational leaders, on the other hand, communicate what they want and rely on their team to figure out how to get there. They paint an inspiring vision, measure results, and help their team see opportunities and possibilities along the way. This approach empowers the team, elevates the leader, and propels the company to new heights.
Why transactional leadership holds you back
I’ve witnessed transactional leadership too many times. It’s especially common in small and mid-sized companies that are growing. Often, this type of leadership manifests between the CEO or owner and their managers. In our experience, we see it most often with Marketing Directors or Operations Managers.
When managers are responsible for running a digital transformation strategy, they’re day-to-day, handling the details, and ensuring their specialists stay on track.
Unfortunately, some CEOs or owners see the manager as their puppet, micromanaging and worrying about every little detail involved in getting from here to there. They bog down every interaction with irrelevant questions and methods they barely understand.
In one case a few years back, our client’s Operations Manager was afraid to ask the CEO to approve a key technology integration that would bring their vision to life because it cost a few hundred dollars. This dynamic stalled, and eventually killed exponential progress on the digital transformation project.
Delegate and elevate
The key is to not get in the way. As Chris Ronzio, the founder of Trainual, says, “Delegate and elevate.” If you do that, you’ll be a transformational leader who sparks continuous transformation in your company.
John P. Kotter, in his Harvard Business Review article, Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail, shared a perfect example of how not to lead:
“In failed transformations, you often find plenty of plans and directives and programs, but no vision. In one case, a company gave out four-inch-thick notebooks describing its change effort. In mind-numbing detail, the books spelled out procedures, goals, methods, and deadlines. But nowhere was there a clear and compelling statement of where all this was leading.”
This is why it’s crucial that you, as a leader, start with a vision that fascinates you enough to stay engaged. Once you have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish, stay focused on the outcome you desire.
Just recently, I was on a strategy call discussing a progressive web app one of our clients wants to build. I was on the call with the company’s Senior VP of Marketing and their CTO.
After about 15 minutes, the CTO finished sharing his vision and asked, “So how do we get there?”
I just smiled.
Before jumping in with a strategic plan, I thanked him for embodying transformational leadership—by sharing what he wanted to achieve instead of dictating the how. If he had focused on the tactics, I wouldn’t have known the outcome he wanted. But because he shared his desired outcome, the path forward was clear.
Your role in visionary leadership
So, when the rubber meets the road, what do you need to have a vision for? What should you engage in, and what should you step back from as a leader?
First and foremost, you need to create the vision—the what, the outcome, the better future.
Think big, think small. Consider how the vision impacts you, your company, and your team members. Reflect on what your vision does for your culture, your customers, and your collaborators.
Next, you need to share the vision. Enthusiastically champion it and keep it on everyone’s minds. Write about the vision, speak about the vision, and answer questions about the vision.
Matt Bertulli, founder of Lomi, humorously described this process for most leaders in his No Competition newsletter:
Repeating myself is a daily ritual. It’s like Groundhog Day, but instead of Bill Murray, it’s me, saying the same things over and over. Imagine trying to get a room full of toddlers to march in a straight line. That’s what aligning a company feels like. Except it isn’t toddlers, it’s really smart and talented people. I’ve seriously considered recording my key points and playing them on loop. Efficiency at its finest! This is probably why I write. It lets me communicate things in one place that can be referenced later. There’s no question that to be a leader means repeating yourself…a lot.
Stay engaged while letting go
Finally, stay engaged as your team pursues the vision. Even though your job is to stay out of the way, that doesn’t mean you stop providing support.
Follow project dashboards, measure results, and monitor KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) along the way to ensure the boat is still heading in the right direction.
Principle 4: Invest in High-Leverage Initiatives
Until now, we’ve been in dreamland, focusing on vision and transformational leadership. This is crucial because 80% of your digital transformation strategy is about vision and leadership.
However, there are tactical aspects of your digital transformation strategy that I strongly believe you, as a leader, need to influence and involve yourself in.
That is how you invest in your digital strategy:
- What projects and initiatives should you invest in?
- Which is a waste of time and money?
- How do you balance short-term wins with long-term results?
These are great questions that will, frankly, be unique to your organization. However, there are some foundational concepts that apply across the board.
Transformation is about more than just technology
Many leaders think that transformation, particularly in digital strategy, is all about technology. They couldn’t be more wrong. Transformation is about vision, leadership, and investing in the right strategies that move your company into a position to shape the future.
Leaders who take a shallow approach to digital strategy, focusing solely on technology, often end up wasting time and money on initiatives that don’t work.
How do I know? Because I’ve seen it happen—over and over again.
Back when Structure was working with smaller businesses to redesign their WordPress websites, this “lack of depth” became quite apparent. We had businesses coming to us left and right to “redesign” their websites, expecting it to be a cosmetic upgrade that would take a few weeks and a few thousand dollars.
In some cases, it could be that simple, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, the leaders we worked with (often the owners or marketing managers) wanted big visual and functional updates to websites used by HR for job postings, by marketing for sharing blog posts, by sales for booking calls, and by shipping for tracking and fulfilling orders.
We learned the hard way that it’s easy to underestimate a project, mess up an entire business operation, and make a lot of people mad by focusing only on technology. There was almost always much more under the surface than what you could see.
So, we had to find a way to help leaders think about upgrading their digital platforms and infrastructure in an integrated way—one that considered people, process, and perspective, and focused on investing in the right changes and upgrades along the way that would have the most impact.
The result of this process is our Digital Transformation Programs.
As a rule of thumb, we focus our recommendations on a handful of high-leverage, high-impact activities that move the needle and drive the business forward.
We often see our clients use capital leverage through pre-selling their products or services to increase available investment capital. We also see them utilize a line of credit or a business loan to fund digital transformation initiatives.
2. Code
Leveraging software and technology to streamline processes, improve customer experiences, or enhance operational efficiency.
- Operations: Implementing an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that integrates various business processes, reducing errors and improving efficiency.
- Marketing: Using marketing automation tools to segment audiences, send personalized emails, and track campaign performance without manual intervention.
- IT: Developing custom software solutions that automate routine IT tasks, freeing up the IT team to focus on strategic projects.
While technology isn’t transformation, it’s a key part. Typically, our digital transformation strategies include code leverage opportunities across various functions in an organization, aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
3. Content
Creating valuable, reusable content that educates, engages, or attracts your target audience, driving marketing and sales efforts.
- Operations: Producing training videos or documentation that can be used across the company to onboard new employees efficiently.
- Marketing: Creating a series of thought leadership articles or whitepapers that position your company as an industry expert.
- IT: Developing technical documentation or tutorials that help users or clients understand your IT solutions, reducing support requests and improving user satisfaction.
This blog post itself is a form of leverage. We produce and publish it once, and it lives on for years, helping readers.
A common form of operational content leverage is SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). By having a set of SOPs for repeatable tasks across your organization, you allow team members to train themselves and reference back when needed without requiring manual support. Bonus points if you combine content and code leverage by using a product like Trainual.
4. Community
Building or engaging with networks of customers, partners, or industry peers that can provide support, insights, and opportunities for growth.
- Operations: Joining industry associations or forums to learn best practices, exchange ideas, and form partnerships.
- Marketing: Cultivating a community of brand advocates or loyal customers who promote your products through word-of-mouth.
- IT: Participating in IT-focused online communities or user groups to share knowledge, learn from others, and collaborate on solving common challenges.
You may also hear “Community” referred to as “Collaborations.” Collaborations involve actively working with others—whether individuals, companies, or organizations—to achieve mutually beneficial goals. Strategic partnerships, joint ventures, or alliances enable both parties to leverage each other’s strengths.
Community and collaborations are powerful forms of leverage because they allow you to access resources, knowledge, and opportunities that you wouldn’t have on your own.
The bottom line
A successful digital transformation roadmap shouldn’t cover anything and everything. It should be strategic—laser-focused on your vision, disruptive and unique to you, supported by leadership, with all investment resources pointed toward high-leverage initiatives that will give you outsized returns.
Principle 5: Promote a Transformational Culture
One of the most common questions I get asked, particularly regarding the branding and marketing aspects of a digital transformation strategy, is, “How often do we need to refresh our website?”
I used to provide a fixed-timeline answer, backed by research, like, “About every 2-3 years to keep up with design and technology trends, evolving user needs, organizational growth, search engine optimization, etc.”
This is a good answer. It’s true, and it’s fairly easy to accept when you think, “Okay, I guess we’ll need to allocate $50,000 to a website redesign every few years.”
But this way of thinking is tactically focused on the website itself and doesn’t address the true digital needs and naturally evolving lifecycle of your organization as a whole.
Today, my answer is deeper. Here it is:
“Digital transformation is an ongoing continuum. Why? Because digital disruption is happening all the time, and to compete and win today, you must, as a leader and as an organization, refresh yourself constantly, experiment with new ideas, scale successes, and let go of what’s in the past.”
It’s a better answer, but also a harder pill to swallow—and even harder to implement because it requires something most people resist: change.
Change is the catalyst for transformation
A culture of change is the backbone of any successful digital transformation strategy. Embracing continuous transformation requires innovation, agility, and a willingness to accept constant and repeatable change.
I often tell my clients that their brand, and their business, is a living, breathing organism. It’s just like they are! And just like them, it doesn’t look the same today as it did when it was a baby. And when it’s old, it will look a lot different than it does now.
One of the most inspiring perspectives on change and growth comes from Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. His views on change and stress are deeply connected to his approach to innovation and the natural world, which resonates with my own views.
Chouinard understands that change is a necessary part of growth and innovation, but he also recognizes that change often brings stress.
What’s refreshing is that he sees this stress as a necessary and beneficial part of change. He believes that discomfort and uncertainty are inherent in the process of making significant changes, whether in business or in life.
In Let My People Go Surfing, he writes, “You need stress to survive. Stress creates change, and without change, there’s no progress.”
The lesson is clear: Change does not happen without stress.
You should not see change as a threat but as an opportunity to grow and evolve to a higher level. Stress is a positive force that drives innovation and helps individuals and organizations adapt to new circumstances.
A company needs to constantly challenge (read: stress) itself to grow.
True innovation requires a willingness to challenge the status quo, take risks, and endure the stress that comes with it. Without embracing change, companies stagnate and lose their ability to evolve.
But we all know change and stress can be incredibly difficult for some people. In fact, there are thousands of books, frameworks, and programs around “Change Management” to help leaders and their teams embrace change and eventually grow.
Domino’s Pizza’s digital transformation strategy
In the early 2000s, Domino’s was struggling. The company faced harsh criticism for the quality of its pizza, with widespread customer complaints about the taste. Sales were declining, and the brand was losing market share to competitors.
Domino’s reputation was so poor that in 2009, the company’s CEO, Patrick Doyle, publicly admitted that their pizza was terrible in a series of honest and transparent advertisements. This kind of honesty was unprecedented and put Domino’s in a vulnerable position.
Instead of simply trying to improve the pizza and hope for the best, Domino’s decided to undertake a radical transformation that went beyond just the product. They embraced a comprehensive digital transformation strategy that focused on customer experience, technology integration, and innovation.
- Domino’s invested heavily in creating a user-friendly, innovative online ordering platform, allowing customers to order pizzas via multiple digital channels, including their website, mobile app, and even social media.
- They introduced the “Domino’s Tracker,” which allowed customers to follow their order from the moment it was placed to when it was delivered, creating transparency and enhancing the customer experience.
- Domino’s shifted to a digital-first culture, where they continuously innovated with technology, launching initiatives like voice-activated ordering and partnerships with delivery services like Amazon’s Alexa.
The digital transformation strategy was wildly successful. By 2018, more than 60% of Domino’s U.S. sales were generated through digital channels. The company’s stock price soared from under $10 in 2008 to over $300 in the following decade, and it became the largest pizza company in the world by sales in 2018, overtaking Pizza Hut.
Domino’s went from being a company known for poor-quality pizza to a leader in the fast-food industry, recognized for its innovation and customer-centric digital transformation. Their commitment to leveraging technology to enhance the customer experience not only saved the company but turned it into a market leader.
How to embrace change to grow
Domino’s continual investment in digital innovation and willingness to change played a key role in their turnaround, showing the importance of a long-term commitment to continuous transformation.
I’m not a Change Management expert, but as someone who has consistently struggled with the stress and fear that comes with change—and has also transformed myself and my clients’ companies over the last decade—I can provide some insight into how to embrace change for growth from both sides.
Embrace humanity
The number one reason people avoid change and procrastinate is fear and doubt. They hold back from moving forward because they don’t have hard proof that the future is better than the past. After all, the future is a pipe dream, an alien idea.
This fear, doubt, and skepticism are often based on what seems like rational, accurate thinking and an objective assessment of facts. This is why it’s common for the most fearful and change-resistant people in your organization to be those who analyze and intellectualize the world around them as a set of fixed data.
This functional fixedness is also why it’s extremely uncomfortable, or almost impossible, for some people to let go of the old and embrace the new.
Unfortunately, that kind of mindset will not work if you want your organization to transform. Your people must face their fear, suspend disbelief, and become open to change. They must get used to letting go of old methods or ideas.
However, instead of forcing change down their throats or drilling it into your people (been there, done that), I’ve found it’s more effective to do the opposite. Help them feel safe by embracing their humanity. Embrace their humanity (and all that comes with it) and help them embrace it too.
After all, these limiting characteristics don’t come from robots—they come from humans. And humans are made to grow—we always have, and we always will. We just need to believe it.
Make failure familiar
Humans also make mistakes. If you want to embrace a culture of innovation and transformation, you have to allow yourself and your team to make mistakes.
Let them fail.
As Scooter Braun, the entrepreneur, investor, and manager who discovered Justin Bieber, said: “Success and failure are neighbors. They live right next door.”
So many successes have been built on the backs of failure.
Fear, doubt, and stress will cause you to want to retreat to the “safety” of familiarity, which is just another word for the same, the past, and what you know. That’s the exact opposite of transformation.
Make failure familiar. Make failure safe. Turn the tides so that when your team faces fear, doubt, and stress, they seek failure as a pathway to growth. Failure is evidence that you’re pushing boundaries and exploring new possibilities.
When you think about it this way, failure becomes an asset. It’s a resource. It’s a tool that actually helps you push the boundaries. You know that when you fail, you’re headed in the right direction.
Failure is the definition of growth.
Reward Innovation
A smart leader once told me, “Your values must have a line in your P&L.” If you are embracing continuous transformation and innovation in your business, in order to be the best, you must put your money where your mouth is.
There are many ways to do this—from recognizing your employees publicly, providing financial incentives, and dedicating specific roles to transformation, to other creative approaches.
At Structure, one of the ways we reward growth through transformation is by giving each team member a $2,000 budget for events, training, and educational opportunities to help them gain new perspectives and embrace new ways of thinking. Our mindset is, if they’re growing, we’re growing!
There are other well-known examples of rewarding and investing in innovation in the market:
- Google’s Cloud Awards recognize employees who come up with breakthrough ideas, whether those ideas are successful or not, encouraging a culture of experimentation and risk-taking.
- 3M’s Genesis Grant Program provides employees with seed funding to explore their innovative ideas. If an idea shows promise, the employee might also receive a bonus or be given more resources to develop the idea further.
- Amazon’s “Failure Bonuses” reward teams that take big risks, even if those risks don’t pay off. Amazon is renowned for being one of the most innovative companies in the world.
The opportunities are endless. The point is, invest in your values with not just your time and attention but also your money.
How Structure can help you shape the future
Your digital transformation strategy will be highly effective if you embrace and adopt these principles. Each of these concepts forms the foundation of our Digital Transformation Program, a three-part consulting process designed to guide you through every stage of your digital journey.
We’ve structured our Program into different levels of engagement, each building on the previous one, to be completed over a 3-5 year timeframe. Our program evolves with each experience, just like you, we’re committed to continuous growth—always transforming into a better version than we were before.
Digital Transformation Strategy Workshop
Every successful digital transformation starts with a strong foundation. Our engaging and productive Digital Strategy Workshop will guide you through creating a robust action plan over 1.5 days.
You’ll receive expert coaching, personalized feedback, and strategic planning from our approachable digital strategists. This workshop sets the stage for leading your company through a digital transformation that is not only possible but also highly effective and sustainable.
Digital Transformation Strategy Development
In the Digital Strategy Development phase, we turn your action plan into reality over 6-12 months. This is where we design and build your new or updated systems, guiding you step-by-step through the process. Our approach is flexible and tailored to fit your needs, ensuring a smooth implementation.
We clearly define roles and responsibilities, provide the necessary tools and templates, and stay actively involved, adjusting the plan as needed to help you reach your goals and objectives.
Digital Transformation Growth System
Our Digital Growth Systems and Digital Transformation Consulting are designed to elevate your digital strategy to the next level with ongoing support and optimization. We’ll recommend one of three distinct packages to fit your support needs. Each package comes with valuable perks, including a complimentary annual Digital Strategy Workshop and significant discounts on new projects, helping you continuously transform.
Digital Transformation Strategy Program results
Our Digital Transformation Program is ideal for small and mid-sized businesses looking to elevate their impact. With dedicated digital marketing support, you’ll grow your business and achieve immediate ROI, as well as long-term results, with minimal time investment from your team. We aim for a 5–10x return on your investment within 12 months, making this system a valuable addition to your integrated digital strategy.
You will experience transformative digital growth, significantly enhancing your brand presence and achieving ambitious business goals. Furthermore, you’ll be positioned to compete and win, unlocking meaningful long-term value for your company and establishing lasting category leadership that your competition will envy.
For more information and to see if your organization is the right fit for our program, schedule a free Digital Strategy Session today.
