tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm

Why organisational culture change is critical for successful digital transformation?

Dr Costas Chryssou

September 2, 2024

tamegon Innovation and Growth Advisory Firm

Considering digital transformation as solely a technological endeavour is, according to a McKinsey survey, the reason that most businesses see less than one-third of the results expected from their digital transformation efforts. Implementing the latest artificial intelligence tools, customer relationship software solutions, re-designing processes and workflows automating customer journeys, and developing internal efficiencies are all progressive steps towards achieving advanced organisational performance. However, all these initiatives run the risk of not bringing the desired impact and benefits if the organisational culture does not correspondingly shift altering also its values, beliefs and strategic goals.


Changing an organisation’s culture during a digital transformation project can be difficult and time consuming as staff, managers and other stakeholders may resist to the inevitable change as they are used to the old ways of doing things, existing processes, skills, job descriptions and functions. Changing the organisational culture can also be difficult during digital transformation initiatives due to misalignment between the strategic goals, values and behaviours of the digital initiatives, but also due to lack of skills and in-house expertise which can exacerbate resistance to change.


So how can organisations successfully develop their digital organisational culture improving the implementation of their DT projects and ensuring a sustainable future?


Reflecting on our successful implementation of DT projects in several education-related organisations, we have found that addressing early on the organisational culture element of digital initiatives and considering the following outlined approaches, significantly improves the implementation of digital initiatives realising the desired benefits and impacts creating a sustainable future.

Understand the environment - Before starting the DT implementation it pays dividends to understand and address any concerns and challenges that employees may face and take the time to reassure them. During DT implementation, it is important to maintain morale and motivation for employees to continue engaging with the project by communicating the goals for the organisation, praising employees for their engagement and support, and consistently addressing issues by asking employees about what aspect of the DT they find challenging.

Demonstrate the benefits - Setting out a clear vision, goals, and reasons for the DT implementation allows employees to appreciate the organisational needs and align them to their own goals and priorities.

Challenge the status quo - Identifying innovation and digital champions across the organisation that clearly understand and are motivated by the technology and the benefits of DT for the organisation allows effective dissemination of the message and support reducing resistance to change. By designing and communicating a phased approach to implementation with built-in feedback loops, as new technology is introduced, enables employees to raise concerns and reflect on learnings resulting in very much wanted engagement with the DT process.

Promote collaboration - Breaking down organisational silos and setting a clear plan for continuous training and learning it helps employees to adapt quickly to working with new technologies that are constantly updated. By encouraging employees across functions and departments to develop a Community of Practice (CoP) enbales sharing of experiences and enhances collaboration allowing the organisation to move forward. Holding regular workshops during which employees across departments consider how they used to perform a task without technology and how technology has made that task easier is a certain way to generate positive communications and gain support reducing fear of and resistance to change.

Remain flexible and agile - Promoting a growth mindset from the start through effective leadership and clear communication, encouraging innovation and experimentation and viewing possible failures as opportunities to learn and improve enables employees to keep engaged with the DT project enhancing probability for success. 

Enable continuous innovation - Considering DT as a continuous transformational process where technologies evolve constantly resulting in new opportunities for internal efficiencies and better customer interactions allows employees to remain agile approaching change as the norm.

From our experience working with large and small organisations we have found that fostering a culture that encourages innovation and experimentation can lead to a transformation environment where digital implementation is driven by customer needs and the need to maintain effective and efficient internal processes. A culture that values collaboration and open communication across departments and functions can help breaking down silos and facilitate the integration and use of new technologies and processes. Strong leaders that set and communicate a vision, inspire their employees and embrace risk taking can develop a change culture that facilitate digital transformation and it does not hinder it. Internal communication through the development of communities of practice supporting the sharing of successes, failures, and learnings, can speed up adoption of new technologies and newly-designed processes increasing productivity.


Fostering a digital culture is often the key to successfully implementing and using the products of digital transformation projects while allowing the organisation to achieve the impacts envisioned and receive the benefits it needs.

Dr Costas Chryssou - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm

Costas Chryssou MBA, PhD
Founder and Managing Director

Sign up for our articles

Sign up to our newsletter

Implementation of Digital Transformation Projects - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm.
By Dr Costas Chryssou June 24, 2024
According to Forbes more than 76% of digital transformation (DT) projects fail to achieve their desired benefits for the organisation. The reasons mostly quoted for so many failings include: lack of leadership, treating technology as a panacea, absence of defined goals from the outset, not having a clear idea of internal capabilities, not understanding the people aspect of the organisation, and misalignment between business and technology parts of the organisation. Regardless of the above outlined difficulties in successfully implementing DT projects, specifically with sustainability in mind, DT is a necessity for all organisations across industries and sectors to remain competitive and relevant to their customers while harnessing technology and change to capitalise on internal efficiencies. So how can organisations improve the implementation of their DT projects ensuring the desired benefits are achieved, and the specific organisational changes (impacts) are introduced? Reflecting on successfully implemented DT projects in several organisations, we have found that following the implementation phases, broadly described below, significantly improves the likelihood of success: Phase I - Designing and Focusing Investment To successfully implement a digital transformation project organisations need to firstly gain a good understanding of the " As-Is " - where they are today, challenges they face, and opportunities they can harness through digitalisation, either internally or externally to grow and develop a sustainable future. During Phase I organisations need to answer questions such as, How can digitalisation strengths be utilised better? How can digitalisation weaknesses be turned into strengths? How can opportunities be seized through effective digitalisation? How can threats and disruption be avoided? We have found that a good starting point for any organisation to gain a good understanding of their internal capabilities and assess their digital maturity is to use tools such as the one described in the below link http://digital.sa.gov.au/resources/topic/digital-government/digital-transformation-toolkit . Such a tool, among many others, enables any organisation to explore current capabilities across five pillars, namely Governance and Leadership , People and Culture , Capacity and Capability , Innovation and Technology , and assess their level of competence across five levels of maturity from minimal to transformed. A SWOT analysis for digitalisation further allows an organisation to reflect on their internal challenges and strengths (e.g. improving internal company performance) and external opportunities and threats (e.g. external capabilities when dealing with customers and partners) and coupled with the digital maturity assessment findings to define the objective(s) for their DT project and the specific outputs and outcomes expected.
Internationalisation in Higher Education - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou May 25, 2024
This article describes the latest trends in internationalisation in Higher Education, challenges and opportunities with a particular emphasis in Oman.
Digital change, transformation, and metamorphosis - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou June 8, 2023
Digital transformation (DT) market is projected to grow at a higher than 20% compounded annual growth rate from 2023 with an associated spending of 1.6 $trillion in 2022 and a projected spending forecast of 3.4 $trillion in 2026. Although this astonishing growth is attributed mainly to the Covid-19 pandemic, which since 2020 caused many organisations to increase significantly their investment and adoption of digital, there are many other contributing factors at play including changing customers' behaviours, preferences, and needs. While digital transformation is a necessity for all organisations to remain competitive, the term is often overused, sometimes confusing businesses and practitioners alike. Many times the terms digitisation, digitalisation, and digital transformation are used interchangeably, together with digital change and even metamorphosis. So what do they all mean and what are their benefits for an organisation? Digitisation is about converting analogue data into digital form and it is the first step that organisations need to take in their digital journey towards digital transformation. Digitisation enables businesses to gain valuable insights from their data, leading to advanced business analytics and the capability of informed decision-making processes. By digitisation, many businesses, that still use manual processes to interact with their customers, can move a step closer to enhancing their customer experience. Digitalisation , on the other hand, involves the change of workflows and the adaptation of organisational processes, procedures, and systems to enable the adoption of digital technologies. Through their digitalisation efforts, organisations can leverage digitisation to improve their business processes through automation, enrich their products or services, and offer enhanced value to their customers. For example, an organisation could be using digitised customer data, as gained from different sources, to automatically generate insights from their behaviour and inform existing products and services and create new ones. Although the transition path may not be linear, digitisation and digitalisation lead to digital transformation. Digital transformation builds on the above described digitisation and digitalisation efforts and prepares organisations to leverage their knowledge and integrate it in all business areas to enhance customer engagement and experience, innovate their business model, and create new value. By utilising digital technologies, successfully implemented digital transformation projects make organisations more agile in responding to changing markets and disruptive business models, thereby making them more resilient to external disruption. Through digital transformation, organisations can achieve significant growth and gain competitive advantage. “…Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers…”
ERP vendor evaluation and selection criteria - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou February 22, 2023
This article outlines the criteria for evaluating and selecting ERP vendors that universities and HEIs should consider using to maximise ROI for their organisation.
How to innovate a Project Management Office - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou September 11, 2022
Recent surveys indicate that more than 50% of Project Management Offices (PMOs) [1] have been in existence for less than two years. This article comments on how to bring innovation into the PMO so that it remains relevant to the needs of the organisation.
Innovation_Management_Frameworks_tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou August 24, 2022
It seems that most articles, presentations and websites represent innovation using lightbulb images putting the focus and emphasis of the whole innovation process, it seems, entirely on the eureka moment - the lightbulb moment. However is this the most significant step in the innovation process? This article outlines the drawbacks of associating innovation only with creativity and proposes the use of innovation management frameworks for organisations to be more successful in their innovation pursuits.
Benefit attribution of change and innovation projects - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou June 10, 2022
Although benefit attribution of a project is very important to any organisation, it is considered very hard to implement and therefore organisations do not put any concerted efforts behind it. This article recommends the development of a ‘line of sight’ between the intended benefits, the changes to the organisational blueprint and the project deliverables in order to ensure that the "right" projects are implemented.
Build or Buy an ERP solution? tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou June 9, 2022
This article builds the case around the advantages and disadvantages of building an ERP solution versus purchasing one from a well established vendor.
Portfolio management - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou March 20, 2022
This article discusses the efficient frontier analysis as a means of optimising innovation project selection, developing balanced innovation portfolios.
Types of an Innovation PMO - tamegon Innovation Advisory Firm
By Dr Costas Chryssou February 27, 2022
This article discusses possible types of Innovation PMO that can be implemented by organisations in order to support their innovation and growth ambitions. It discusses structures such as promoter, incubator, champion
More Posts
Share by: