Digital Transformation starts with the change in the mindset. Ability to change and adapt to the changing business environment through the transformation of process, culture, business model or even exploring different area to sustain the business interests. Digital transformation is a fundamental shift in our behaviour and the way we look at a problem in the form of solution.
In the same context of Digital Transformation, Pramod Dhakal from Hitechies had a chance to talk to Lee Featherby of Powerful Points.
In this conversation :
- Challenges with digital transformation
- Diversity at workspace.
- Culture of Innovation and diversity.
- What would Quantum computing do ?
- What makes employee motivated to wake up early in the morning ?
- Alignment with vision and reality.
- Transformation from homogeneous culture towards heterogeneous culture

Furthermore into this conversation .....
The companies who were at least trying to go towards transformation of their own business. Now it has become almost a mandatory step towards rethinking the business. How do you see this evolution?
Yeah, and it's a difficult time at the same time some business are able to adapt faster than the others or some businesses find a way around on how to adapt. Why do you think some are better equipped with the others, does that come down to the mindset of the leadership within the company?
And what has covid 19 overall taught us, you know as far as being an entrepreneur is concerned?
You mentioned business model in the context of the way businesses operating for over a decade or two decades or any number of years their business is in operations and how do you see those businesses now, all of a sudden you know adjusting the business model itself?
Interesting. And you know when you talked about transformations a little bit earlier and when a client comes to you and asks you to explain, because you know from the client's perspective, they are unaware of the digital transformations and for them being digital is digital transformation right. So, how do you explain a client about the concept of digital transformation?
Yeah, I mean I'm looking at different sectors right. Traditional banking for example or let's say, insurance company for example, these companies like you know large corporations as such are very traditional at the same time, we need them right and of course they also need us but largely we need them and we chase them and we find the best rates and offerings from those companies right. And for them they are always an elephant and then you see smaller companies that are popping up. I'll just give you an example Revolut is quite big here, when those companies comes and knocks the door, what do you think these traditional organization would have to do in order to adapt fast?
Yeah, because when you look at the FinTech, I think this is the most fascinating sector you know personally as well, there's a lot of innovations right and most of them are either in the block chain space or you know are using some kind of innovations around the FinTech you know either startup which is doing some interesting things with your money and the money is working for you rather than you working for money and so forth, you know there are interesting companies as such it gives me a little bit of hope that you know we are looking at new innovations.
How do you see the innovations overall within the context of a traditional organization?
I think, it's about 10 years now but yeah let's say when it picked up it was about five to seven years, right so okay when it when it hit the bubble then we sort of you know everybody started to look at it like you know; oh my god i missed out in that opportunity kind of mindset but, yeah it's about eight to ten years.
It's growing by the way, you know if you want to hold on to that.
On AR and VR I had a chance to talk to a couple of founders in this particular space who are especially in the medical sector, they are working with patients with the rehab issues and with the mental well-being and so forth. So they're using AR to support those kind of issues at the same time you also touchdown on the quantum computing and I'm thinking about a few different things now, one of them is; more and more devices are connected to the internet and yet we are not worried about the environmental issues.
We are we are connecting at least 125 or 27 devices per second and that's coming from Gartner and when we are connecting all these devices in addition to the all the bit coin miners, using all the powers, what happens to the energy space?
It's a small one.
I would like to be in that conversation as well, because I'm working now 18 hours a day and that's not enough.
You know it's funny thing that you just said. I wanted to just try out to actually leave my phone and everything for at least one day a week and first few hours I managed to do that right, so I'm like okay, I want to keep up with the with what I've said, I'm not going to use any kind of electronic device and I'm just going to walk outside but you know after a few hours you know I somehow find a way to just to have a peek right. So that's how badly we are affected by the technology unless ....we find ourselves in a very difficult situation somewhere in the desert but otherwise....…
The thing is you said something interesting there again, because I used to wonder like; why am I so excited in the morning and then just like during this pandemic, especially I'm working even more and I'm kind of thinking like I woke up early and then with a bit of a workout, I calm down and start to work right. And as soon as I see the first email, I want to respond as soon as I see something interested, I want to see you know and I think that curiosity somehow gets to us and then that that becomes our norm ...
Yes. I think this is one of the subjects that I'm once again very close to where we are going from transformation to transformation within larger organization and you can you can come up with different strategies right, you can have the best strategy that you can put on the paper and I can do that right, but at the same time I cannot find the motivated people to work on that strategy to make it happen.
And how do you blend that strategy to work with those people like who are less motivated or how do you motivate those people?
I was talking to the leadership again on the similar context and I said to one of the program manager that, if you are asking a person to manufacture a tire, let's say a tire of a car then for them it is just a tire in the process, but if you ask them like; hey you are making a tire for a supercar and there's a strong motivations there right, there's a strong reason why would they actually manufacture such a tire. So obviously they would get up early and like you said there is a big reason for them to get up early and that would be a one of the strong motivator for them to sort of accomplish that goal.
Maybe it's a wrong one but...
Yeah, I think you had a better way to put it together, the one that you gave me of example of the janitor. I think maybe that that sort of context when we are putting up as a leader perhaps helps people to be motivated. What does that tell you about the organizational culture when you are bringing up let's say a big transformation initiative within the organization,
How do you make those culture ready towards digital transformation?
A lot of organizations you know, what they see is like one of the competitors are taking this initiative change and to apply I don't know agile transformation they're organized and then they see like; okay we can also do this, let's hire those consultants, and you know consultants are like a SWOT team right. So they go in and they make some destruction within the organization and sometimes those destructions are too big and sometimes the destructions are a good destruction because they have to rebuild the organization. How do you see the approach you know, what kind of approach would you advise to organization who are at least willing to transform the organization?
And one thing that we have noticed, you know within the last decade or so, is we are seeing within the organization, we are seeing more of a culture that used to be a homogeneous culture to sort of getting more towards a heterogeneous culture. Is that same within the Australian context?
Yeah because what we are trying to get to is more in terms of diversity right. You know if you're having a more heterogeneous culture then perhaps you are considered as a diverse you know organization that you are accepting all the views and you're respecting all the different backgrounds and so forth right, so it's not being dominated by one particular views and you know there's more research being done about whether or not heterogeneous culture creates better innovations or there's a more rapid innovation with those companies or organizations which are adopting those structural decisions. How do you see those affecting the innovation?
Pramod Dhakal is a Tech entrepreneur at heart, a natural leader, an Agile practitioner, and a Digital Transformation provoker. He has spent over a decade implementing various large-scale transformation initiatives in large multinational organizations. He is an author and contributor at Hitechies largely in the technology space. Pramod is an active investor in cryptocurrencies and he is extremely positive about the future of the decentralized digital economy.