As famed Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt often told his students, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!" But CIOs often forget this fundamental truth, since it's tempting — especially when you're in a technology leadership role — to focus on digital products' features and functions (or pricing) rather than customers' underlying needs.
It's only logical to think this way. After all, engineering and product teams invest years of effort, erudition and inquiry into creating technologies that will perform flawlessly. But the most successful organizations are those that can infuse insights from outside of a narrowly-circumscribed "business and technology" point of view into their digital transformation and long-term growth strategies.
Instead, leaders need to think outside the box, bringing ideas from a wide variety of academic and cultural domains to bear on the business problems at hand. What if — rather than planning like a technologist — you started out by assessing fundamental human needs from the perspective of a behavioral psychologist? What if — instead of taking a project manager or implementation lead's point of view — you tried reasoning like a digital anthropologist?
It's our contention that by doing so, you'd become far better able to understand the underlying human needs that should be driving every digital transformation project. By taking the time to consider the individual, social and cultural requirements at play, you can satisfy and engage the users whose experiences are most important for your company's success.
Let's take a closer look at what this entails:
Applying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to understand user expectations
Abraham Maslow first elaborated his "Hierarchy of Needs" theory of human motivation in a paper that was published in 1943. The theory has been further refined by other psychologists, but remains a widely-accepted framework that's used to explain why humans do what they do. In Maslow's hierarchy, human needs are described as existing within five different but interdependent levels. At the bottom are needs — for things like food and shelter — that are fundamental to survival, whereas closer to the top the needs become more social, psychological and aspirational in nature.
A fundamental lesson from Maslow is that all digital transformation projects should begin with mapping user expectations. Only by understanding what users expect — and appreciating what they want and need — can you be confident that you're creating a business strategy that's based on satisfying these expectations. Many times, user expectations may go unrecognized — even by the users themselves.
Digging deeper to meet the needs that your customers didn't even know they had will go a long way when it comes to generating goodwill and building brand affinity.
Digital transformation doesn't have to be sweeping or expensive to be effective. Instead, it has to be highly relevant to its audience.
Taking a participant observer approach (from digital anthropology) on your digital transformation journey
The academic discipline of anthropology coalesced in the early twentieth century around the work of scholars such as Franz Boas, who believed that it was essential to study cultures within their own contexts, without comparing them to other traditions or ways of life. As a result, anthropologists developed the participant-observer research methodology — in which they spent extended periods of time in close contact with the people they were studying, making detailed observations and carefully documenting their findings.
Today's digital anthropologists apply the same research techniques to the digital realm — everything that was built using binary code. Because technology is now deeply embedded in every part of our lives — from how we form relationships to what constitutes our cultures and rituals and just about every aspect of our communal existence — it's a natural object for this sort of inquiry.
Digital anthropologists look at research questions through the clear lens of careful analysis and rigorous objective inquiry. The discipline asks us to put aside our prejudices and focus on how people — including customers and prospects, employees and partners, business leaders and frontline workers — are actually using technologies. And it invites us to investigate the cultures, narratives, beliefs and symbols that surround our digital experiences — in order to improve them.
Thinking about digital transformation from a digital anthropologist's perspective lets us see that technologies aren't tools or "things," but instead are powerful sites of self-expression and extensions of group identity. It shows us that becoming data-driven is as much a cultural shift as a technological one. And it reminds us that striving to put users' needs first — whether they're individual or social — must be at the heart of every digital transformation journey.
Taking this kind of approach to digital transformation may not initially be intuitive for every stakeholder. But the benefits are enormous. Of course, companies that can leverage the power of digital technology to meet needs that customers didn't even know they stand to win profits and market share. But they're also poised to enable even bigger changes – and perhaps, even to redefine the very limits of human potential.
Does this sound like a tall order? It is— but it's just the beginning of what thinking differently about digital transformation makes possible. To take a deeper dive into EX Squared's unique perspective on how Maslow's work can help you plan a digital transformation journey, download our white paper. Or explore our recent playbook on digital anthropology's relevance for business transformation.