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Implementing a digital culture is about changing organizational behaviors. On more fronts than you can do at once. And a change you need to take all the way down through organizational layers to reach each employee. An implementation challenge with large similarities with securing a healthy workforce. Where target, motivation and tools need to reach every employee. Leverage your tricks from adoptions a healthy lifestyle when implementing a digital culture.

Adoption of a healthy life style

Adopting a healthier life style is a challenge most people face sooner or later in life. Where New Year’s promises running out of steam early in the year is not good enough. Instead you need a more robust execution model. Delivering improvements 12 months per year. To make your engagement level feel like if it is January all months of the year.

When adopting a healthier life-style we have a broad range of options to choose from. Increase exercising. Improve sleeping. Stop smoking. Reduce sugar intake. Reduce alcohol intake. Eat full wheat bread. Exercise daily. A broad spectrum of choices where it is easy to dream about all and get trapped in doing nothing good enough.

What to give priority to depend on individual situations. Road warriors struggle with eating and drinking habits. Young parents struggle with work life balance. Others struggle with committing to regular exercise sessions. Each of us owning the choice of what to focus in our personal plan.

Implementing a digital culture

The change associated with implementing a digital culture is similar in nature. It is easy to set up an ambitious vision, with long time horizons. But what matter is progress in enabling the new culture daily. Towards goals making all employees feel engaged in the required change. And all contributing with small steps weekly.

Implementing a digital culture involve a broad spectrum of changes. Taking decisions faster. Increasing the level of customer led innovation. Influencing customers in digital marketing channels. Manage in markets characterized by vulnerabilities, uncertainties, complexity and uncertainty. With a superior customer understanding based on data and powerful algorithms.

Leading to a need for prioritization on what to do first. And different prioritization in different teams based on their immediate challenges.

What I learnt from my health tracking app

After 8 months pushing to improve my own health the most valuable sparring is my goal tracker. Where I set goals with a horizon of 4-6 weeks. Building from a set of predefined categories defined by experts. Where I get to define the specifics under each category into specific goals. With a bonus if I check in weekly and report on my goal progress.

All these contributing to the feeling I am pushing towards new and fresh goals. Like a January month all year around.

Apply insights on implementing a digital culture

You can increase the chances of success for your digital culture shift. If you can mobilize the same level of change energy. Be clear which categories your cultural transformation is all about. Set expectations teams and individual is responsible to break it down further. To actionable goals, articulated to support weekly or monthly progress. Promote the use of short stints and weekly follow up. And dare to select. No plan reach the goal when spread too thin. Or when focused too far out to create a sense of urgency.

Questions for you and your team

1. Which categories are central for our digital culture – limit to 10-15 crucial ones.
2. Articulate which behavioral changes each category is all about -rather than end-goal.
3. What does it take to break bold visions to individual actions – spanning across your company.
4. Which tools will you use to track progress – digital and simple to enable weekly reporting.
5. How do you plan to leverage the gamification – where teams and individuals compete.

Additional reading suggestions 

• Changing company culture require a movement, not a mandate [ARTICLE] – by Harvard Business Review
• 7 ways to jumpstart healthy change in your life [BLOGPOST] – by Harvard Health Publications
• 10 secrets of making lasting change [ARTICLE] – by Huffington Post
• Digital success requires a digital culture [BLOGPOST] – by McKinsey
• Building Digital Culture: A practical guide to successful digital transformation [BOOK] – by Daniel Rowles
• Building a digital culture is key to business longevity [BOOK REVIEW] – by Small Business Trends
• Learning from Google’s digital culture [BLOGPOST] – McKinsey