ADKAR Is Everything

Last week, at the Digital Leaders of Business Club, we listened to a talk by Burger King CTO Dmitry Ishchenko about the difficult journey the company took in trying to break an existing monolithic solution into microservices. To be honest, the path is not unique: many have stepped on this rake, though far from all have made it to the end.

More interesting are the conclusions Dmitry draws in his presentation, some of which appear in the second photograph:

• In today’s environment, if a company does not develop its IT, sooner or later it will have to; otherwise, its competitors will pull ahead. The later it starts, the more it will have to pay.
• The company’s top executive must be involved. At Burger King, the CEO was the initiator at the outset.
• The team’s readiness for change.

I would like to dwell on the last point in more detail.

Every self-respecting Chief Digital Transformation Officer should know the ADKAR method. Its name consists of the initial letters of its stages.

I do not quite understand this fondness for abbreviations. I even wrote a satirical post about it, on the innovative SHORIN method.

In any case, the ADKAR stages are as follows:

• Awareness: recognising the need for change;
• Desire: wanting to make changes;
• Knowledge: knowing what to do in the changed circumstances;
• Ability: being able to use new knowledge and tools;
• Reinforcement: embedding changes so that they work over the long term.

My experience has repeatedly convinced me that the main challenge of digital transformation is people: their readiness for change and their desire to move forward. In the early stages, the team must feel that readiness and desire coming from the company’s leaders. Otherwise, nothing will work.

Dmitry and I are not alone in thinking this. Other club members do too, including Ksenia Rodionova, who spoke a few weeks ago about the digitalisation of retail giants such as Castorama, Lenta and Vkusvill. Incidentally, the first photograph is from her presentation. She, too, believes that ADKAR is everything, and that one must begin with people.