Digitalization not only determines our everyday (working) life, it is also changing the entire business world. The associated challenges affect all companies: rapid changes and increasingly complex market requirements, strong competitors, and, above all, courageous disruptors who are breaking new ground with new technologies. Every company has the right prerequisites to not be left behind and to shape their own digital transformation. They just have to be recognized and used.

Digitalization occurs mainly on two levels. First, it influences processes and our daily cooperation; second, it changes entire business models. Depending on the industry and the revenue model, companies more or less have deal with both levels. Some business models change fundamentally or even become obsolete.

It is important to realize that every company has to deal with its own digital transformation, or, in the best-case scenario, to design it itself. It is also clear that nobody can or must do it alone. The digital transformation should not just be a top-down process. On the contrary, it can only be designed collectively.

But how do we shape the digital transformation together? And above all: with whom?

The fact that every company has to work on its own digital transformation may at first seem like an additional hurdle: exchange with other companies is helpful, but cannot deliver universally effective solutions. But that’s not entirely unexpected. After all, every competitor has its own structures, values, employees – and its own problems. In short, a completely different starting point. That’s why the knowledge and experiences of other companies can be useful information, but will never be completely transferable. The same applies to many consultants who perceive and assess companies from the outside and (intentionally or not) transfer their experiences from previous consultations into their current projects.

Digital change in teamwork

The solution for designing your own digital transformation is so close. Every company already has it under its own roof: its own employees. In order to face the challenges of digitalization and to actively promote digital transformation, you must look for innovative approaches and solutions in your own company; the required knowledge is already there. To activate it, structural and cultural prerequisites must be created: for the successful transfer of knowledge; for the dismantling of silos; for really flexible working models. That way, employees (and their knowledge and talents) can be cleverly networked, combined and used, and their ideas spun together.

Once again, your own digitalization does not have to be an abstract construct. The fact that you are faced with distinct (!) challenges can even be a great advantage because your own employees know their company and their culture – often like the back of their hand. You just need the necessary space to design and the drive to think in new directions. Last but not least, supervisors need to give a serious sign that this self-dependent action is actually desired. After that, they become the best sparring partners, idea providers, and disruptors one could ask for.