Hello from me, Isabel, and welcome to Digital Leadership, your 90-day transformation program.

Before we begin this program, I would like to share a few words about its purpose and how you can get the most from it.

It's all about living in the age of digital technology when every problem - technological or not - includes a digital solution. Whether we embrace it willingly or not, digitisation is spreading to every aspect of our lives.

Digitisation is much more than the devices and software we use. It is the cumulative impact of technology that has changed the way we live. We experience this as constant change, continuous connectivity and endless choice. For organisations, responding with technology and adaptive workforces is essential as shifting social norms make major overhauls as necessary as continuous micro adjustments.

The purpose of this program is to give you the ability to achieve the results you desire from your enterprise's compatibly with the shifts happening around us. The traditional approach to business success was to eliminate obstacles. If the advancement of digital technology to date has not been enough to convince us that our traditional approach is no longer feasible for sustainable success, the rise of AI on how we work, trust and connect should be.

The hurdles of unpredictable change hit enterprises differently. Some saw their ability to operate choked off, in some cases, practically overnight. Others were unprepared for a surge in demand they could have met but did not know how. Yet others have ramped up their operations to meet an explosion in demand but will have to find a solution for excess capacity when the need for it is over.

Each of these situations has one solution: adaptive capability, that is, the agility to take advantage of change, not merely to survive it.

How you do that is by rewiring your organisation to become adaptive and agile, and because these are the times we live in, digital. That is what we mean by a digital transformation.

Anyone who has been involved in transformative organisational change - new systems, restructures, management changes, for instance - know they don't usually start and finish in 90 days.

However, all transformations begin with a transition period during which a new reality is established. It is generally accepted that this transition period takes three months of steady effort.

People who have achieved a transformation, whether through dieting, exercising, breaking a habit or becoming a morning person, know how important that early and consistent commitment is.

Transformations are more successful when they follow a process and produce incremental results.

Getting things right start with doing the right things. This program is based on practices that have evolved over decades of organisational change management. More importantly it distils two decades of experience and methodologies relevant to business in the digital environment.

The material in this program has been designed so that every lesson will produce an outcome with each outcome a foundation for the next lesson.

All transformations need a compelling reason and must follow an underlying logic.

Changes without rhyme or reason are bound to fail. Here, we focus on the basic rule that applies to every enterprise: to produce and deliver the level of value to each and every stakeholder that makes doing business worthwhile.

For an enterprise to exist and succeed, it needs the means and ability to protect, improve and create value.

1. Protecting value - is how they stay viable.
2. Improving value - is maintaining and growing a healthy business.
3. Creating new value - these are the initiatives that achieve the big goals, by continually adapting the enterprise's resources to offer new value in new ways to existing or new customers, even as markets change.

The success of an enterprise is directly related to the proportion of the attention its leaders direct at each of these efforts. An enterprise that spends its resources protecting value are at constant risk of depleting resources without results other than survival. You cannot protect your way to profit.

A transformation prioritises new value creation, and done well, helps take care of the other two concerns.

Every enterprise needs digital transformation.

No enterprise can keep up with technology by steady change. Technological change is exponential. Its impact is felt in leaps, not increments, for example a retailer can build the capacity to sell to a global market in a week, not the years it would take to open stores in every country. When changes in the market happen exponentially, an enterprise must be able to move accordingly.

No change produces returns like technology. It's not the technology itself that delivers outsized results, it is technology's ability to multiply an enterprise's output with fewer resources to deliver increased value to customers, owners and other stakeholders.

With a future where technology is increasing, dealing with transformative change will become part of every manager's responsibility and every worker's skill set.

This means planning, designing and implementing digital - or any other - transformation is not a project that you have someone take care of for a time then everyone goes back to doing their usual job.

I put this program together to demystify transformations and make them practical and accessible to enterprises from any industry sector, no matter how small.

Overwhelming evidence shows that successful digital transformations drive performance and competitive advantage. On average, digitally mature enterprises achieve twice the results in earnings growth and are valued at twice that of digital laggards.

How is that for a case for transformation?