Liliana Ashton - Lessons learned from driving digital transformation for renowned global brands

Liliana Ashton: Great to be here. Thank you, Tim, for having me.

Tim Butara: So, as I just mentioned, you basically led digital transformation initiatives for quite a few brands that I think all of our listeners will know. So really big brands, so to speak. And I want to start off by asking you if there were any digital transformation challenges that were common to all of these different companies. And how do these challenges compare to the challenges that smaller brands are having with digital transformation?

Liliana Ashton: Fantastic question. Thank you, Tim. Well, Let's say, in my opinion, the roots of the challenges of digital transformation in all organizations, big and small, are not new ones. In fact, as an introduction to my published academic research titled Ambidextrous Organizations and the Role of Change Agent, I've quoted a wonderful piece from Machiavelli in his book The Prince, and that reads, “There is no more delicate matter to take in hand, no more dangerous to conduct, no more doubtful in its success than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes.” And this was written in 1513.

So as you can see, this is not something totally new, but yet more into the modern days of digital transformation. And in answer to your question, I see three key challenges here. Of course, there are many sub challenges and many others that we can include to these, but I've put it into three main ones from my own experience. The first one is to do with organizational culture and the resistance to change. These can be translated into the well known challenges of departmental silos within organizations and even across different countries and cultures where these multinationals operate. In fact, according to McKinsey, 70% of digital transformation projects fail due to resistance from employees themselves. So this is what McKinsey research have shown.

The second key challenge for digital transformations, in my opinion, is the lack of clarity and the lack of flexibility in the digital transformation budget. That means setting up a rigid and limited budget for building successful digital transformation processes, and this can be really the key challenge that could in many cases fail a digital transformation project. And the third, the last, but not least in my three challenges, is the Agility challenge. So basically, agile transformation is at the heart of the digitalization, and the scaling is so important for any successful transformation, particularly in large enterprises.

I also saw that studies reveal that 68% of companies that identified Agility as one of the most important initiatives for the successful digital transformation are the ones that actually have succeeded. However, becoming agile before embarking upon a digital transformation project, it's quite challenging, and this is why it's my challenge number three. So yes, those are the three challenges that I can identify from my opinion.

Tim Butara: So resistance to change, lack of clarity, and the difficulty of successfully implementing Agility.

Liliana Ashton: Exactly right.

Tim Butara: And how did you approach solving these challenges throughout your work with the big brands that we mentioned earlier? Were the solutions that you discovered unique to each particular brand or challenge, or were you able to leverage similar or even the same strategies for several of these companies?

Liliana Ashton: Like with families being their own little world, in companies, I found through my work that they also have their own nuances and their own way of operating. But overall, I think that if we follow key rules of implementing digital transformations, we won't go too far wrong. Basically, for me, successful digital transformation requires not only the right set of tools but also the right expertise and the right guidance to drive the process for the best results. So in terms of the solution for organizational culture and resistance to change - as human beings, we are naturally conditioned to resist change at first, especially if we don't see or understand how this change will benefit us or our teams.

So, really, a company culture and good communication is key to tackle digitalization challenges. It is essential to encourage employees and other stakeholders to get accustomed to the digital culture, the new tools, the new technology, the new solutions, and will help everyone to persuade and to get advocates, I would say during this transformation phase. Also, I think that as part of this organizational cultural resistant change there is one strategy that I have implemented across all of my digital transformation projects, and this, I think is quite unique because it's something that is very close to my heart and that is called ambidexterity in organizations. It's called ambidextrous organization, which is what I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast.

Ambidexterity means, as we have to hand the right and the left hand means that an organization can really operate also with-- in two different branches or arms or hands. So one of them could be the new one, the one where we're implementing digital transformation and all the new tools and the new technology, and experimenting with them. And the other one is the business as usual. It’s not that the ones that are doing the business as usual will be doing the boring things or the boring work. They will be there maintaining the structure and the foundations while the new implementation of the new technologies are taking place.

And the way ambidexterity works so well and it has worked for me in big and also medium and smaller digital transformation projects is that I implement all of the new tools in one workstream that then slowly start to get intertwined and mixed with the old in a very controlled and tested way. So this is similar to the agile way of working. So we are introducing smaller changes in smaller iterations, and we keep testing and going forward and advancing with the new implementations of new elements. So this is in a bigger scale and also taking into account organizational cultural resistance to change is then lessened within this organization.

Tim Butara: I really like the concept of ambidextrous organizations, and I think that it's what a lot of successful companies that are successfully navigating their digital transformation journeys are already doing, but they haven't really pinpointed it or they haven't put a name to it. So hopefully, there's this trend that it's easier to understand and to implement something if you can name it, if you have a word for it. So hopefully the awareness that this is called ambidextrous organizations or ambidexterity will also be helpful to maybe some listeners who are having trouble with implementing this.

Liliana Ashton: Wonderful. Yes. In fact, I just thought I shall mention exactly or I shall define this concept that is so wonderful and has served me so well over my project, and I'm just going to read it out out of my own research paper. “Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to use a dual strategy approach of exploration and exploitation. So in essence, ambidextrous organization is one of the abilities to equally and efficiently serve today's customer demands while simultaneously being proactive to implement innovation. So it's really wonderful to be able to implement this strategy in digital transformation projects.

Tim Butara: That was a really great quote. I'm glad you read it out loud. I like the pairing of exploration and exploitation. It basically covers both sides, both sides of ambidexterity. So, Yeah, thank you for reading that. Can we now maybe focus on one of the projects that you ran in greater detail? You can pick whichever you find to be the most interesting to discuss here, or whichever was most impactful. But can we talk more specifically about the specific challenges, solutions and outcomes of the project? Maybe one that really exemplifies both the challenges of digital information, but also the great return on investment of doing it the right way?

Liliana Ashton: Yes, of course. Actually, one of the projects that I've enjoyed the most is for a holiday company. It's a big holiday company. It's called Eurocamp. It's very well known here in the UK. Started in the 80s to make camping more basically better known in the Volvo driving at the time families in the UK going into Europe. And then it became much more well known, a little bit more higher standard, and it started to become a really big business. This company went through an amazing digital transformation, and I was lucky enough to be asked to lead it. Basically, it was a holiday company that was based-- marketing all of its products through a brochure. So it was print brochureware. And they wanted to initially renew the implementation of their content management system. So it was a replatforming project to start with.

So we started with the platform of some of the websites. They had about 20 websites with different products and different brands. But then this became such a successful transformation in the way they started to work with technology that we reviewed our initial operational replatforming project and we started a full digital transformation. In essence, what we did was to create-- at the very heart of all of this was, the company embraced an agile way of working. I still prepared some of the timelines related to a waterfall plan because that was needed for some budgeting and not rigid budgeting but budgeting to have an idea of what we need to make this happen.

The agile part of the project had a flexible architecture, and it was aligned to creating releases. These releases were constantly being monitored and reassessed because alongside the technology that was being renewed, there were also the ways of selling these holidays, the way we would retrain the sales team at the end of the phone, the way we retrain the customer service team and the marketing team and the ecommerce team. So this flexible architecture also allowed us to create these microservices and open APIs. So it really created extensible architecture to manage a diversity of technologies and also at the same time, reduce costs.

We had agile teams both onshore and offshore, and we really utilized the knowledge of both. And we had a dedicated release management function as well. So that was also a key to the success. But in terms of ROI and this is all about agile. But what happened in the company, basically, when we started this process, the company was turning over online around 30 million. But by the time we deliver the full digital transformation project, the whole company has changed. From measuring-- the way the commerce and the ROI was measured was changed. We were looking at how to make changes depending on how the interactions with the customers on the different touch points were perceived every and were checked every week.

Basically, the overall result in less than 20 months is from 30 million turnover online, to an 80 million turnover online. And the company was then acquired by a bigger conglomerate of holiday companies, and then after that by venture capitalists because of the success of the digital transformation project. So for me, that is still-- and the reason why it was my-- I think, is the one that I enjoy the most is because we started very small and it became something that the whole company was part of, aware of. We were communicating constantly every week. We were telling the whole company in all countries what we launched, what we didn't launch. They had access to all of our boards, agile boards. They were part of it. They weren't just a team tucked up somewhere else. And then all of a sudden, coming up with ta-da, here is your new technology. You need to use it. So it was one successful and enjoyable project that I've been involved with.

Tim Butara: Yeah. And that's definitely a crucial part. And it goes back to one of the key challenges that you pinpointed at the beginning, right. It's lack of transparency and lack of clarity as to the benefits and the development, the progress of the digital transformation initiatives and how they fit into the broader company strategy. And if you're able to get that, as you just showcased now, you can much more easily get the whole company on board. Even in the case of a large, global, maybe distributed company, it's still, you know, that you need to let everybody in on what you're doing. You need to allow them to get on the same page as you if you want them to be on the same page as you, basically.

Liliana Ashton: Absolutely. Absolutely. And for me, the key reason why this was a success is because everyone was involved. At the beginning, it wasn't so, though, I must say, it wasn't plain sailing all the way along. And this is what we need to also say. If anyone is going into a digital transformation project, thinking that everyone will be really happy, open arms and saying, Yes, come and bring us your new technology and your new way of working. That is not what happens. But the key thing is that we need to take everyone with us because we're not there to just create changes for the sake of the changes. We need to be able to communicate how this is going to benefit each and every one of the people working in that organization, because everyone that is working in that organizatio,n in one way or another, they are all really wishing for the success of that company, because that, in turn, will mean the success of them as individuals and their professional lives. So it's about communication. It's about and explaining why and how to take people with you into this new reality.

Tim Butara: This was another great example of how vital the people aspect is to the digital transformation and how it really goes hand in hand with the technology aspect. And it seems to me like you're the type of person who really went full circle from being involved in these huge digital transformation projects and programs for these huge companies and, you know, driving everything there on the technology side. But now, as we mentioned in the intro, now you founded BreatheNow Hub, which focuses not on something technology related, but on employee well being, on the employee experience, on workplace well being. And I'm wondering, what made you make this transition? What made you focus on the human side of digitalization more than on the technology side?

Liliana Ashton: Actually, I think it was my experience of seeing how the best projects that have led flourish due to the way I’ve actually engaged with my teams. Having managed big teams with these digital transformations, and having done all of my science based degrees and all of them, I realized I really-- what really matters is looking after your teams and each individual in your teams in a holistic way. So this person that is working with you and delivering their own work in the best possible way, this person also has a life that has to work around this project, particularly now that our reality of work have changed.

The world of work is transforming in the same way as our digital transformation projects are transforming workplaces, the way that we now work in this hybrid working environment, remote working that now is here to stay, much more accepted than before. Many companies doing it for a week. All of this really needs and must take into account a greater employee trust and engagement and autonomy. And with that engagement and autonomy, we also need to look after the well being as people, mental and also health overall, well being.

Tim Butara: So how would you define employee well being in the digital age? So maybe in the era of Covid or post Covid, what would you say are the key elements that leaders or employers should kind of guarantee for their employees?

Liliana Ashton: Such a good question. I think that the main way for me to define this is that now we are not-- in the past, I think that we were more encouraged or expected, I should say, to have compartments in our lives. From nine o'clock until five o'clock, you are the person that did CSS coding or JavaScript coding, or you did the relational databases coding, or you did this part of the project or the project management of it. Six o'clock or five o'clock came and you went home and you were that person that you are at home. Right now, I think that everyone is much more aware of this person being a person that has the family around them, a person that has to juggle so much like we all do, to perform at their best, to be really proud of their job and to be proud of the project that they're part of.

So I suppose that is what, if there's anything that the last 15, 18 months since March 2020 have taught us as people and as professionals in this field is that we need to take into account that there are no compartments in a person's life, in a colleague, in a team work, in a team member’s life. But we are a holistic one person that when we make them and when we make us or each other feel good, then this is how great organizations really go ahead from the rest. The organizations that seed happiness and health at work as a priority rather than a nice to have are the ones that are going to succeed and go further. This is the main reason behind why now I'm dedicating half of my time, at least, in this new company BreatheNow Hub.

Tim Butara: I agree. And I definitely think that this was one of the biggest changes that Covid has introduced, because we kind of saw a rise of focus on employee well being, an employee experience, even pre Covid. But then when Covid hit and we were kind of confined to remote work and to having our work life balance disrupted, because the compartment that you talked about earlier, you know, they had their positive and their negative sides, because now some people had the problem of, because of these boundaries being eliminated, they would just have no work life balance and they would just continue working indefinitely, practically. So I think that really if there's one good thing Covid has done is that it has made us rethink how we treat the employee experience and how we approach it, and also not just how we as individuals or as employees view it, but how leaders and leadership and CxO positions view it. And obviously this is reflected in the change in your position to BreatheNow, to founding this.

Liliana Ashton: Yes, yes, I totally agree. And I think it was a real inspiration for me to see-- when I started during lockdown, I decided to invite some of my colleagues from different companies that I've done some consultancy and management consultancy work, and I reintroduced myself as “Yes, I'm your management consultant change in transformation management consultant. But now I'm actually offering you to join my breath work classes. I'd like to take you through this little journey half an hour a week at the beginning of the week or at the end of the week to create this healthy bridge between work life and home life, even though you are in your house at that time”.

And it was fantastic. I ended up gathering about 50 people in my group, and it was every week, twice a week. And then I did also a children's session in the middle of the week for a few weeks. So it was an amazing experience. And then that's what made me realize that this is something that we really need. And I couldn't see anyone else doing it. So I thought, Yes, I should do it. I should really gather a hub of practitioners that are interested in working with companies and corporates and bring this practice to their desks. So they don't feel that they have to go to a place, they have to take time to drive or walk or to that place. They can just use their own breath and start to tap into their own creativity, intuition, maybe find some focus, maybe find some calmness. So yeah. It's a wonderful tool that I really believe in.

Tim Butara: Yeah, because it's important to us not only as employees, but first as human beings. And I think that this is the great shift that you alluded to earlier with the focus now on employee well being, not just meaning focus on the employee well being while the employee is working for me, but focus on the employee’s well being-- looking at the employee as an individual. You know, how after they log off work, after they close slack, after they say buy to their teammates virtually. How do they feel after that? And what can I do as a leader, as their employer, as the CEO to make their experience, after work experience better, even if just ever so slightly?

Liliana Ashton: I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more, Tim. Absolutely. Because this is basically what will make the huge, the real difference between companies. I think that next to digital transformation and agile infrastructure and agile ways of working. I think that at the same level is how do people feel? How do they feel working in this project, working with you? Are they feeling that they can focus, that they're valued, that they have tools as well? Because this is one of the things that I've also realized, that because I've been doing yoga, breath work, and I had all of my well being practices well in check, I was so much more resilient to all of these. I've always been really resilient in working long hours, in pushing and pushing and pushing. And then I actually realized through my own pushing of myself that I was also pushing other people too much.

And that's something that was a bit of a wake up call for me actually. This didn't just come out of nowhere. I actually experienced that I was pushing some of my closer, more senior team members too much, and they were saying, we cannot keep up with your rhythm. I was thinking, okay, I need to slow down a bit and think about how can I help them and breath work and doing a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of few tools that don't take long, something that everyone can take home with them and also help them with anything, any challenges that they might find at home at the weekend, because then they will come back to work more renewed, calmer, more focused, more creative. So it's an amazing good circle that we are creating here for the good of all, really.

Tim Butara: Yup. I definitely agree. I definitely think that focusing more on ourselves, more on our kind of innate needs and impulses will benefit us in all areas of our lives. So both in business as well as in our personal lives, and likewise for managers who take such great care of their teams and who really, who really commit to providing a great experience for their teams, I think those teams will be much better primed for success with digital transformation. I mean, we're already seeing it now. But I'm guessing that this is a trend that will only continue to be more pronounced.

Liliana Ashton: Absolutely. Totally agree. So I am so very happy to continue to now really ramp up this part of my passion. So now my passions in work and life are divided - are one, and also divided into digital transformation, project management, program management, and also breath work and wellbeing for employees. So I'm finding it really exciting, really, really good to transform myself into this new, new kind of person and offering these things as well. So, they say, the only thing that is constant, the only constant in life, is change. So I am really happy to be embracing this transformational change in my own self as well.

Tim Butara: Would you say that what you're practicing right now is actually ambidexterity?

Liliana Ashton: Absolutely. Wow. I've never thought of that in that way, but absolutely. Right. Thank you, Tim. I never thought of calling it that way, I will now adopt that.

Tim Butara: I just connected the dots. I'm glad I was able to help you to a new insight, actually. Awesome.

Liliana Ashton: Wonderful. Yes. Love it. Yes.

Tim Butara: Great. This has been a fascinating discussion, Liliana. I really enjoyed it. Just before we wrap it up, if our listeners wanted to reach out to you or learn more about you, how can they reach you?

Liliana Ashton: I think that the easiest way is to go to LinkedIn. And in there I'm posting loads of new things and practices, and you will see things around BreatheNow Hub and also what I do as digital transformation and change and transformation management consultant. So, yeah, all my information is there. So please come and visit me. I'm really happy to have a chat with whatever I can help.

Tim Butara: Awesome. Thanks again for joining me today, Liliana. As I said, it's been a pleasure speaking with you.

Liliana Ashton: Yes. And with you. Thank you for having me in this podcast. Thank you. Really happy to be part of it.

Tim Butara: Well, to our listeners, that's all for this episode. Have a great day, everyone, and stay safe.

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