One Ring to Rule Them All

Two hundred thousand years ago, give or take a couple days, homo sapiens appeared on the Savannah and started to develop behavioral traits that literally became ingrained into our genetic makeup. And the one behavioral trait to rule them all, the one trait to find them and in the darkness bind them, Survival. Fast forwarding this movie, survival leads to group structure, group structure to social interactions, and social interactions to social organizations.

Now to oversimplify, survival + social = heightened awareness of authenticity, trust, character and safety which is gathered in an instant through verbal and non verbal communication. And this is where the corporate digital approach broke down or at least it did until 1 or 2 years ago. The belief was that the key to digital transformation was replacing humans to make things faster and faster. <insert buzzer sound here>. However, as Maelle Gavet, the COO of Compass shared at the Forrester conference in Chicago, technology should not been seen as the end goal but as a means to empower people to reach the end goal.

This is an extremely important concept that we all need to embrace - the human factor, both from a customer perspective and from an employee perspective. This MUST always be the center of the universe for any company during their digital journey, because deep down homo sapiens are genetically hard wired to make a personal connection. For at least today, digital is not able to achieve this result, however it is an incredibly powerful tool to help enhance our abilities to connect - did someone say social media??

On a side note, storytelling may be the perfect tool help make connections, but that is a topic for another day.

Do you disagree, let me know, open safe collaboration is the best way to learn.

#DigitalTransformation #culture #customerobsession #employeeobsession