Improved Sight Through Insight
Sight Is Changeable
Sight isn't just a visual thing. What comes in through the optical part of our visual organ gets interpreted by the brain, which in turn can lead to all kinds of different perceptions of what was taken in. Sight is clearly changeable, and highly individual. Those who focus purely on the optics of "sight" tend to believe it only declines with age. But sight as a whole can actually improve over the years, even if it takes an extra pair of glasses or two to get there.
Sight Improves With Age
This improvement feels like sight both widening and deepening. You find you see better into the distance (let's call it "foresight") and up close ("near-sight"), as well as sideways ("peripheral vision") and even backward in time ("hindsight"). Sometimes you even get the sense that you can see the invisible, or things that perhaps weren't meant to be seen at all. This is likely thanks to better insight: a growing, seemingly unconsciously stored body of information that helps our sight "see through" things that not even optical aids can reach.
The Ability to See
Being able to "see through" things, to have a "better overview," or simply "improved sight," can be considered one of the many abilities we develop over time, and one that often ends up being decisive in our everyday lives. It follows that this should be a natural part of our business offering, and not least our digitalization offering: to actively work on strengthening these insight-based abilities, both internally and externally.
A View on Digitalization as a Foundation for Digitalization Assignments
It's fairly well known that there's no consensus on what digitalization actually is, even though many people try to apply their own view of it to a client-specific context, as if no other perspective existed. Seeing through that kind of thing is something we, as digitalization consultants, ought to be good at, and perhaps then pass that knowledge on to our clients, for a fee, of course. Given the enormous diversity of thought, both about what digitalization is and, above all, about how to go about creating the right conditions for a flexible way of working that supports continuous digital transformation, it's fair game for anyone to think out loud on the subject.
The idea here was to follow up with a self-developed view on digitalization from what might be called an industrial perspective, drawing occasional comparisons with digitalization in the built environment sector, since that's the business area where I personally have the most experience. Note that this is simply an attempt to simplify and illustrate what's been hinted at above. Hopefully it can help spark discussion around different views on digitalization, and from there help shape a shared view of something that, for some of us, could serve as a business platform to keep building on. In the long run, based on our view of digitalization as it evolves over time, we carry out value-creating digitalization work for our clients, each with different needs, different levels of digital maturity, and, not least, different views on digitalization and how to create value with it. In such a digitalization landscape, where several competing, organized ecosystems are fighting for their own survival, and where understanding several levels of "life cycle management" is needed just to sustain one of your own, it's essential that this is all grounded in a shared, correct understanding of "our view" on digitalization and "our role" within it.
Closing Your Eyes Before Opening Your Sights, and Creating Synergies
So as not to make this too long, and to build a bit of anticipation, and hopefully some buy-in from you for what I'm writing about, I'll pause here and pick this up another time. What I do want you to take away from this article is that we're all entitled to our own view, not least when it comes to digitalization and our role in it. But these views are usually shaped by our insights, where insight within a domain allows our view of something to shift and, hopefully, improve. This is probably something we can all agree on, and it's a good place to start: with something we've already found common ground on, wouldn't you say?
To be continued ...
In the next article, you'll be able to read about the view on digitalization from a more personal perspective, one that's more experience-based and less rooted in the literature (or perhaps you just missed those particular pages), but definitely not carved in stone. Just like this opening piece, everything will remain open to people with open minds, who don't need to think alike, but who will hopefully, together, help us move toward a consensus so that we can take our first steps into the future.
To give you a taste of what's coming, here are a few keywords: landscape, ecosystem, "life cycle," capabilities, and transformation.
Curious how a sharper view on digitalization could shape your organization's next move?
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