My Background

Before I start my story I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Hans van Bommel and I like to call myself a Digital Transformation Accelerator. For the past 10 years I’ve been specializing in Digital Transformation and I’ve found some quite interesting and surprising things I’d like to share with you. During this period of gaining knowledge I met my co-author Jo van Engelen, an experienced board member and chaired professor. It turned out we both had the same view on the subject, yet from a different perspective. We decided to write a book about it and ended up with a bundle of four books, which were published in the Netherlands between 2014 and 2017. We’re now proud to present our English version of the bundle which will be available in June 2019. Pre-orders can be made via our company website.

Synopsys Book Bundle

The bundle is about IT and management. In this new era, where everyone’s connected to everyone else, with increasing information accessibility, with new technology businesses overthrowing the old company hierarchies as if it were child’s play, information technology turns out to be the driving force behind sustainable societal growth. Many of the old organisations seem stuck in old structures, old methods and outdated IT systems. Digital transformation is urgently needed and requires a new management style that leaves no room for plans that are etched in stone. Innovation is done by cycling, step by step (one pedal push at a time) while learning from small mistakes and adjusting whenever necessary.

The Label "Cycle to Accelerate"

I launched my new label Cycle to Accelerate at the beginning of this year, focussing entirely on organizations that have come to the decision, from a digital perspective, to truly become a high performer. In my opinion this means becoming a high performer in Digital Transformation and delivering business impact accordingly. Our services focus on measuring "Digital Transformation Performance" together with our customers, and implementing improvement steps. Over time, with the help of our tools, our customers will be able to do all this by themselves.

The Story, which will be never-ending...

Starting today, I’d like you to join me in this story about Digital Transformation. It’s a never-ending story, because Digital Transformation is a never-ending process. Performing it right is a choice, a lifestyle, and you’ll have to fully commit to it. In practise however, this proves to be quite difficult. That’s what this story is about: how to fight complexity with complexity.

Digital Transformation within an organization usually starts with good intentions, like, for instance, modernizing according to a brilliant plan. It feels like the organization needs to overcome some terrible failure from the past. Often it is not the first brilliant plan but one of the many over the years. When starting to think about Digital Transformation we often forget that we have already been in it since we started using the first hand calculator. Digital Transformation is therefore a never-ending story. The problem of gaining success lies in the choice of building up a culture within an organization that supports this never- ending story.

Ongoing successful Digital Transformation is more about a state of mind than about the state of digital technology. Without the right attitude and intention we will unfortunately be faced with many limitations and poor success rates. From today on, I will take my readers forward via my weekly story along a path of building up high performing organization regarding Digital Transformation. Stay tuned!!!