Digital transformation: how to avoid the hype and build a real strategy

In most organisations, digital technology generates constant activity. Steering meetings, tool roll-outs, innovation committees, dashboards. The agenda fills up, teams are mobilised and budgets are voted. Yet on the ground, nothing changes structurally. Processes remain complex, decisions slow and systems compartmentalised. This confusion between movement and progress is costly. How can this confusion be diagnosed and remedied?

What digital transformation really means

Digital transformation refers to the in-depth overhaul of an organisation's processes, decision-making methods and user experience thanks to digital technology. It is not simply a matter of adopting tools, but involves a change in operational logic. An organisation is transformed when digital technology changes the way it creates value, not when it digitises what already exists.

This distinction is rarely made explicit in organisations. The term «transformation» is often used to describe any initiative with a digital dimension.. A new intranet, a CRM deployed, a mobile application launched: everything becomes transformation. And yet these projects may well coexist without ever calling into question the silos, duplications or inconsistencies that penalise the real user experience.

Transformation therefore presupposes a clear, shared strategic intention, translated into coherent decisions. Without this clarity, digital initiatives accumulate without direction. The organisation moves, but is not transformed.

Why agitation often ends up replacing strategy

The digital fuss is all about proof. Senior management want to show that they are investing in digital technology. Teams want to prove that they are making progress. Investors want signals of innovation. The result: projects are launched to reassure, to keep people busy, to demonstrate momentum. Digital is becoming a business indicator rather than a performance driver.

This confusion is reinforced by the dominant vocabulary. The terms «acceleration», «pivot» and «disruption» saturate the discourse. They establish a permanent injunction to speed that discourages strategic thinking. We act quickly so as not to be left behind, we test everything so as not to miss anything, we multiply initiatives to show that we are on the move. This headlong rush gives the impression of mastery, but often conceals a lack of direction.

The other factor is the fascination with the tool. Software is concrete and a dashboard is measurable. Deploying a solution gives the feeling of solving a problem. But if an organisation doesn't know precisely how digital technology should serve its strategy, how it should transform its processes or improve the experience of its users, then changing the tool won't change anything. The tool adds to what already exists without questioning it, creating a new layer of complexity.

Agitation or transformation: how can we tell?

This confusion can be diagnosed by a number of signals.

• The proliferation of digital projects with no shared vision. Each department launches its own initiatives, each business line deploys its own tools, but no one can explain how these projects fit together or what overall effect they have. The organisation is multiplying its projects without any coherence emerging.
• The recurrence of similar projects that fail for the same reasons. You re-launch a collaborative portal because the previous one didn't work. You change your CRM because adoption remains low. We redesign a site without understanding why the previous one did not meet our needs. This repetition reflects an inability to learn structural lessons. The organisation reacts without analysing.
• The gap between rhetoric and reality. Presentations are full of transformation ambitions, but employees are still using Excel files, emails and manual processes to bypass official systems. This gap reveals that digital initiatives are not responding to real needs. They are being imposed without being integrated.
• The absence of difficult decisions is also a reliable marker. An organisation that is truly transforming must arbitrate, prioritise and give up. It must agree to shut down systems, simplify processes and question habits. If every project is validated, if no initiative is stopped, if no tool is decommissioned, then the organisation accumulates without transforming.

What structural errors are fuelling the unrest?

Certain organisational practices encourage agitation rather than transformation, such as digital control by means of resources alone is one of them.. Committees focus on budgets, staffing levels and deadlines, but rarely on user results or business impact. This budgetary logic pushes us to fill envelopes, justify expenditure and multiply deliverables. It never questions strategic relevance.

The second mistake lies in the absence of cross-functional governance. Each department manages its digital projects independently. IT deploys systems, marketing launches campaigns and HR digitises its processes. These initiatives are moving forward in parallel, with no single body capable of imposing coherence. The result is a fragmentation that degrades the user experience and multiplies maintenance costs.

And finally.., Fascination with technological trends is fuelling unrest. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, metavers: each new wave generates pressure to react. Organisations feel obliged to have a project on each subject to avoid appearing out of date. This logic of mimetic adoption replaces strategic thinking. We deploy because others are deploying, not because a real need has been identified.

How do you assess an organisation's strategic maturity?

Four observable dimensions can reveal the quality of a digital strategy and allow us to judge the level of the cursor between agitation and transformation.

• Clarity of vision. Ask three managers at different levels what the organisation's digital strategy is. If the answers are very different, if they are vague or if they simply list projects, then the vision is not shared. An organisation that is transforming itself knows how to explain simply what it is trying to change and why digital technology is a lever for achieving this.
• The coherence of initiatives. List the five main digital projects currently underway. Identify their objectives, their managers and their target users. If these projects are not coordinated, if they create redundancies or if they involve the same teams without coordination, then the organisation is acting without orchestration. Transformation requires an overall approach in which each initiative reinforces the others.
• The ability to arbitrate. Identify the projects stopped or refused over the last twelve months. If this number is zero or very low, if all the proposed projects are validated, then the organisation is accumulating without prioritising. Transforming implies giving up, concentrating efforts on what really counts, accepting not to do everything at once.
• User impact. Ask end users directly, whether they are customers, employees or partners. Has their experience really been simplified? Have lead times been reduced? Have irritants been reduced? If the answers remain negative despite digital investment, then the projects are not transforming the experience. They are adding tools without solving the problems.