NIGEL VAZ is CEO of Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation company, and a member of the Executive Committee of Publicis Groupe. Named by Consulting Magazine as a Top 25 Global Leader, Vaz leads a 20,000-strong company that advises some of the world's largest businesses on their transformation initiatives. Publicis Sapient clients include British Gas, Carrefour, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa, Marriott, McDonald's, National Institutes of Health, Nationwide, Nissan, T-Mobile, and Unilever. He is a regular commentator in broadcast and print media including the BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and is an inductee of the BIMA Digital Hall of Fame.

Preface xvii

Section 1 Now 1

1 The Death of Business as Usual 3

It's All Change 3

Truth, Knowledge, Vision 4

Constant Beta 9

Digital Assets and Liabilities 10

Digital Business Transformation: Why It's More Than Just Technology 12

2 The Four Forces of Connected Change 15

Customer Behaviors 16

Technological Change 18

Business Models 23

Societal Change 26

3 What Is Slowing Down Established Businesses? Blocks, Brakes, and Behaviors 31

Top-down Decision Making 33

Organizational Silos 33

Legacy Technology 36

Short-termism 38

Talent Shortages 38

Values and Culture (and Purpose) 40

"Not Invented Here" 41

Section 2 Next 45

4 Characteristics of a Digital Business 47

The Inconvenient Truth 47

Decoding What Digital Companies Do Well 49

Decoding How They Do It 52

5 The Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) of Digital Business Transformation 57

The Two BHAGs of Digital Business Transformation 58

Goal 1: Developing the Muscle of Continuous Change (the PS How) 59

Goal 2: Building the Capability to Identify and Realize Value (SPEED) 61

6 Strategy 65

Swarm Intelligence 65

The Role of Strategy 66

Anchor Strategy on Your Customer, Not Your Competition 67

Determine "Where to Play" by Looking at Your Market Differently (the D-3 Model) 68

"How to Win": View Your Transformation as a Portfolio of Moves 71

Build "Your" Capabilities: The Partner Ecosystem 73

Bringing Products to Market: The Elusive Product-Market Fit 75

7 Product 77

Operating in Constant Beta 77

The Relentless Hunt for Value 79

The Inconvenient Truths of Product 79

The Forces of Change in Product 81

Agile, Lean, and DevOps 82

Banking Case Study: Transforming Product 85

8 Experience 89

Everything in Your Business Contributes to Your Customer Experience 89

What Is Experience, Anyway? 90

Orienting to the Customer 93

Brand Is the Experience and Experience Is the Brand 95

Data and Computation 100

What Makes a Great Experience? LEAD (Light, Ethical, Accessible, Dataful) 104

9 Engineering 107

Technology as a Cost Center to Technology as a Value-driver 108

Spaghetti Tech: The Layers of Enterprise IT 110

Moore's Law 110

Legacy Technology 111

The Impact of Product and Rise of Engineering 112

Technology and Engineering 114

Architecture: Cloud 115

Microservices 116

Ways of Working: Agile, Lean, DevOps 118

Engineers 119

Automation 120

It's All About the Talent 120

10 Data 123

Data as an Asset 125

Getting Started with Data 126

Utility: How Do You Get Useful Data on the Right Audience? 128

Data Architecture: Is the Data in a Format and Structure That Are Accessible? 130

Data Science and Artificial Intelligence 131

Designing for Data: How Do You Design Your Products, Services, and Experiences to Collect Data? 133

Ethics: How Does Becoming Data-led Impact Your Ethical Responsibility? 133

11 Leading a Gryphon Organization 137

Learning to Think Differently 138

Characteristics of a Gryphon Organization 140

Section 3 How 147

12 Components of Successful Digital Business Transformations 149

1. Always Remember the Ultimate Goals of Digital Business Transformations (the DBT BHAGs) 149

2. Align the Team Around a Shared Vision 150

3. Get C-level Buy-In 151

4. Anchor in Outcomes 151

5. Seize Your Quick Wins and Communicate 152

6. Move Fast 153

7. Be Thoughtful About Your Governance Choices 154

8. Choose Partners Who Will Co-create and Are a Fit for Your Team 155

9. Keep Your Teams Small and Cross-functional 156

10. Consider New Approaches to Funding That Match the Way Projects Work 157

13 What Transformation Journeys Actually Look Like 159

They Are Never a Straight Line 159

They Require Treating Digital as More than a Channel 161

They Are Almost Always Driven by Uncertainty 163

Without a Clear Vision, Functions Get Disconnected Fast 165

The Many Paths to Transformation 166

14 The Beginning 169

Why There Is No "End" 169

Where Do We Go from Here? 170

What's in Your Digital Moat? 173

What Are You Building? 173

Everyday Superheroes 174

Notes 177

Acknowledgments 185

Index 189