Lubomira Rochet talks with Frank van den Driest about what has blocked the transformation she led. She locates the blockers with the ADKAR change model, and her answer is that awareness and desire were the easier part. Knowledge and ability were where the work sat.
Key findings
- Her position is that digital transformation is not about technology. It is a people first thing.
- The digital community grew from 200 people when she arrived to 3,500.
- Upskilling reached 52,000 colleagues, supported by a masterclass series broadcast live every week during COVID.
- The organizational choice made in 2014 was to embed digital within all the functions rather than build a silo of deep experts.
- She names two prerequisites for a successful transformation: the ability of the culture to change, and the support of the chief executive.
Where the blocker actually is
Rochet answers the question about blockers with a model rather than a complaint. ADKAR breaks change into awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement, and which letter blocks you depends on the company. Awareness can be a long battle, the whole evangelization phase about why digital matters. At L’Oreal it had already been done by the chief executive, so it was not the key point.
Desire was helped by culture, which she describes as competitive. The team created desire by focusing on countries. Canada was willing to test a lot of things, and once it worked they showed the Canadian case on e-commerce, on marketing and on data. Everyone else wanted to do the same and do it better, which she calls a desire to shine.
Knowledge and ability are the critical phase of any transformation, and her account of why is about how it feels on the receiving end. You are telling people who have done something very well for years that they should now do it differently, and worse, do things they are not naturally good at. They do not know what is important, they have no KPIs, and they are judged on something they feel naked about. Eighty percent of the effort went there.
Three moves
The first move was recruiting. The digital community was 200 people when she arrived and is 3,500 today, built by hiring people who had the expertise, the ability and the knowledge to do the work.
The second was upskilling existing colleagues, on a scale she calls massive: 52,000 people. During COVID that became a full masterclass series broadcast live from the office every week, with content built around many aspects of the transformation.
Why she refused the silo
The third move was organizational design, and she calls it the key aha moment. In 2014 there were two choices. One was to build a silo of hardcore deep experts in digital and e-commerce. That is great, because those people understand each other and move fast, and it is a fast way to get to digital delivery.
It is not a fast way to get to transformation. Transformation is not about getting good at digital with good digital people. It is about transforming everyone else. So they embedded digital within all the functions, and she is candid about the immediate cost: everybody hates you instantly. The digital people no longer feel extraordinary. The marketing and commercial people find themselves managing colleagues whose jobs they do not understand.
Her conclusion is about what makes any of this survivable. A culture able to change and a chief executive who backs it. The backing she had was not enthusiasm about a trend. It was a chief executive who said he knew this was going to change his business.
The moment that lands, she says, is when you understand that digital is not an expertise but the way business is run today. Which is why she argues there is no digital marketing, only marketing in a digital age. When the chief executive understands that, the support follows.
Scope and limitations
This is one leader’s account of one transformation, given in conversation. The figures for recruitment and upskilling are her own, and she is explicit that the biggest blocker depends on the company.
Source
This page summarises Humanizing Growth Series: Lubomira Rochet on leading the digital transformation, by Lubomira Rochet, Frank van den Driest, 2021-04-26.