Change is inevitable, and the disruption it causes often brings both inconvenience and opportunity.
Robert Scoble – Technology Evangelist
“Only 8% of CEOs believe their business model will survive the current levels of large-scale digital disruption.”[i] Digital disruption is the use of tech to make an organization competitive. This is only one piece of the puzzle. The competitive challenge involves worker’s hearts and minds during COVID time. Let’s look at both sides of the AT&T disruption story.
AT&T has been around for over a hundred years. The CEO of AT&T wants to reinvent the company. However how do you shift a battleship or huge organization quickly? It’s not easy. EVERY large company now faces this:
“Today, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman chief executive, is trying to reinvent the company so it can compete more deftly. Not that long ago it had to fight for business with other phone companies and cellular carriers. Then the internet and cloud computing came along, and AT&T found itself in a tussle with a whole bunch of companies.”
During COVID digitalization involves architecting, designing, and deploying a competitive business model:
“By 2020, Mr. Stephenson hopes AT&T will be well into its transformation into a computing company that manages all sorts of digital things: phones, satellite television and huge volumes of data, all sorted through software managed in the cloud.”
Every company’s challenge: AT&T workers were hired, promoted, and reinforced for one set of expectations and behaviors. Now, they must adopt new behaviors and learn digital tech. So, how does a company convert analog hearts and minds to digital hearts and minds?
Work Lesson Earned: The rest of the story. ATT board and the CEO have a new message for their employees. The cover of the New York Times article says everything: “Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: ‘Adapt or Else’.” This message is heard all over the corporate and small business world, whether we like it or not. So, what do you think of this messaging?
[i] ‘The Straightforward Guide to Digital Transformation’, Raconteur, February 13, 2019.