Digital Front Door

Ep. 5 - Your Tech Stack Isn’t Broken, Your Org Chart Might Be

• Scott Benedict • Season 1 • Episode 5

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If your retail transformation feels like a tool parade with little traction, this conversation will change your roadmap. We sit down with Barbara Wittmann, founder and CEO of the Digital Wisdom Collective, to unpack why technology isn’t the bottleneck—culture, clarity, and middle management are. Barbara has rescued “dead patient” projects across retail for 25 years, and she explains how empowering the right people, not buying the next platform, creates compounding impact.

We dig into the anatomy of human infrastructure: the trusted, often quiet, mid-level leaders who connect silos, translate strategy into action, and spot risks early. Barbara shares how to find them, how to give them a safe sandbox to practice new behaviors, and how small cross-functional cohorts can turn timid experts into confident catalysts. You’ll hear practical tactics like building shared mental models, setting clear guardrails, and starting every meeting with the same purpose and end-state visuals to keep distributed teams aligned across time zones.

Instead of drowning in dashboards, we explore how static high-level maps of systems and data restore orientation, why problem definition beats solution chasing, and how most retailers can unlock more value by optimizing existing stacks. Barbara’s “Mindset Before Machines” mantra reframes executive decisions: invest in people, language, and navigation before adding another tool. She paints a picture of the digitally wise organization where human architecture, technical architecture, and decision artifacts converge to strengthen the whole.

If you’re ready to reduce initiative overload, surface hidden change makers, and turn AI, data, and platforms into real results, press play. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who shapes transformation, and leave a review telling us which tactic you’ll adopt first.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Digital Front Door. I'm Scott That Addict. Today's conversation really tackles a topic that has become, in my view, mission critical for a number of different types of organizations, not just retailers, and that is digital transformation. There is the truth, in my view, and that is while most companies are focused on the technology, the real challenge lies in people and in culture that power and take advantage and leverage these new technologies. In retail specifically, this couldn't be more true, whether it's AI-driven merchandising or connected stores or retail media networks. Technology is accelerating change faster than, in some cases, teams that are tasked with running that part of the business can really adapt. What retailers and brands today need is not just digital expertise, but in my view, digital wisdom. Joining me today is Barbara Whitman. She's the founder and the CEO of the Digital Wisdom Collective. They are a consultancy that helps organizations reimagine transformation through the lens of human capability, leadership, and culture. Barbara has spent more than 25 years looking through the lens of human capability, leadership, and culture. She has led a number of complex IT and business transformations, and she is here to share her wisdom on how organizations that build digital infrastructure that turns digital strategy into real-world success and real-world results. And Barbara, welcome to the Digital Front Door.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation all day.

SPEAKER_00:

As have I. As have I. One of the things I've learned about you and your organization is that you are really doing what I think is some fascinating work helping leaders aim technology and align it to innovation and purpose and people, quite frankly. And I'm kind of wanted to start with your perspective on how you think some of the barriers unfold in terms of how organizations, particularly within retailing, transform their business in many ways. And I think a lot of companies talk about transformation as it's just about a new platform, AI tools, data integration, things like that. But some of the things I've heard you say is that really the problem isn't technology, it's our orientation towards it. I'm just kind of curious, for the benefit of the audience, what do you what do you mean when you say that? And how can retailers and brands start reframing digital transformation as a people first, not a tech first journey in your view?

SPEAKER_01:

Man, that in itself would be a half-day conversation here. So I'm I'm trying to uh roll backwards a little bit and uh kind of start from uh the where where I came into the conversation. Um so for 25 years I have worked mainly with retailers, so I'm excited that we're talking because that's my home base. Um and uh I basically came in when digital transformation or projects were uh broken. So when a project is basically the dead patient on life support, that that's when I would rush in, right? Uh all the big consultancies, they run off and they're like, hey, we got it, you know. Um and uh I would uh come in and uh and fix things. And you know, it I I mean, hey, at the start it was the big adrenaline rush. I'm like, okay, this is cool. But then I found a repeating pattern that um it's it never fails because of technology. It really fails because of um the people are in the wrong place, um, have the wrong skills, or are simply um not empowered to speak up what they see. So basically in every project I've encountered really, really capable people in organizations, and once you give them a little bit of support and a little bit of pick-me-up, they are excelling. And they're actually uh fixing the problem on their own. So my job became easy, and I was like, so how do I do this? And and um, you know, instead of always rushing in and doing the same thing over and over again, how can we pre prevent this from the get-go? Um so that's how I poured what I know from 25 years into what I do now. And um so what what I have uh observed and and what my you know fixes to to get around is and obviously there is no easy answer because it is a systemic problem um is that you have to define a couple of people within your organization, and that is specifically the middle layer because that's the layer where you cannot delegate complexity. Everything upstairs complexity gets delegated. But in the middle layer, they are like they are the executors. So um you want to find the people who really are hungry for making things better and uh you want to um start empowering them. Um and if you have a certain number of people in your middle layer, and I always say you gotta start with four, um they are starting to become a self-reinforcing um ecosystem within the organization. Um so that is one part of your question, right? Um how how do you get going in this? Um generally I think when you are picking out new technol technology and adding new technology to the stack, um, there needs to be a much broader perspective on what the implications are. Um so I think the the problem that we are seeing with um transformation failing also starts with um how do we align strategy and how do we define initiatives from there? Because with every client that I see, they have too many of those. It's almost like the fear of missing out, right? And with AI, things don't become better. So we need to start looking from many different angles and also look from the people perspective and say, are we stressing out our core resources? You know, what do we do? Consultants alone are never the fix. And that seems to always be the very simple solution for organizations. Um and I mean I know I'm shooting myself in the foot, right? I I've um put myself out of a job, but I think I am uh more of an enabler than anything. And uh in these days, especially with AI, every organization, especially retail, because it's so much of the same. So you need a differentiator. You need to start cultivating in-house innovation drivers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And it's it's so interesting because through my own e-commerce experience, I learned a lot about concepts like user acceptance testing, which is uh really not so much in the deployment phase as it is even in the design phase of a technology solution where the the people who are tasked with actually using whatever it is that's going to get built are this wonderful resource of what is the business problem, to your point, that you're trying to solve. And as you think about ways to solve it, are the individuals at multiple levels of the organization who are actually going to have to use that solution, did they help design it? Are they on board with it? And are they effectively champions of it as it gets implemented across an organization? It's interesting. I was taught that by people from a software background, but I don't always see it implemented in other retail organizations or even places that I go to as a consumer today, where literally a technology solution is dropped on individuals and hope that works out. Here's the text port phone number if you have a call. That's not really the way to do it, I think, is the way that you're you're talking about the fact that you have to think about the humans that are gonna use that solution, they're gonna use that technology while you're designing it and as you're implementing it and even afterwards, rather than just dropping uh a solution and telling them to have a nice day, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And it's the humans that are going to use it, but also the humans that are gonna execute on uh making it happen. Um and uh you're you're describing the textbook example on how it's it ought to be. Um, but because in times where we are switching directions because of external factors, um so often we are trying to cut corners, and that's the um the difficult thing, right? So in in many projects that I step in to try and write things again, um the problem was never really defined that they're trying to fix. Um everyone is thinking in solution mode right away. And um I mean it seems a little bit uh it seems so natural, right? That we define the problem and then we go forward. Um, but we're trying to save time and we're trying to jump into a solution right away. And then because we are in the solution without knowing the problem, it gets it gets even worse, right? And then uh something comes out at the end that needs an entire rework. So and that comes from pressure from the top for the most part. It's like, hey, we're short on time, we're short on on money, so make it happen, make it happen. Um So sometimes it really uh pays off to take a breath, and it doesn't mean that you have to entirely slow down, but it's about asking the right questions, and it really is an organizational muscle that you can train.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed. And kind of this human infrastructure is one of the things that in in reading some of the materials that I've seen you share really resonates with me. And I'm curious in retailing uh in a number of different functions, whether it's in sales or merchandising or operations. It feels like technology adoption is often it outpaces the cultural readiness of the of the organization. How do you define human infrastructure and what does it look like inside a retailer or in inside a consumer brand that's tried to modernize with it with with new tools, with new data, with new business channels? What does that look like in your view?

SPEAKER_01:

That's an interesting one. Um so the human infrastructure means that you have uh core people in your organization that are functioning around a mindset for innovation. Um a core group of people that have a clear uh direction of values, you know, the values that you function around, the values that you are saying yes or no to certain things. Um so that is the the main two things. And also it consists of people that can connect the dots. Um and connecting the dots means across silos, across systems, uh from an end-to-end process perspective. Um and uh that is really the core traits of what we call the human infrastructure. And um the key is if you have a couple of people strategically positioned in your organization, again, middle layer, they are starting to become infectious. They are starting to um to get others inspired to really step it up and question things. And um this whole equation of mindset to me is so critically important because it really switches from oh my god, that was a top-level decision, you know, I I cannot influence anything, it's the victim mode, right? To switching it over and saying I'm seeing something that I can maybe address with my boss. And uh so they are becoming the doers. They are becoming the canaries in a way in the coal mine that see things that are not good and they would have the backbone to address it. So it is a lot about how you are carrying yourself as a leader in a middle layer of an organization that really ties together human infrastructure. But that being said, it means that the people who are um, you know, pointed out as they can be the champions, they need to do a little bit of self-development work. That means they need to look at what are their own limiting beliefs, you know? What are their own uh what is their own attitude that's not helping things.

SPEAKER_00:

And I want to explore that a little bit more if that's okay. One of the things that really struck me in not only your comments today, but what some of the things I've been reading about what you do is this this concept of hidden change makers in an organization, not just at the top, but really uh, as you mentioned, uh throughout the middle of the organization. And it strikes me that in retailing, that could be category managers, it could be account executives at a consumer brand, it could be leaders of store operations uh in a field organization. And I'm curious, as you advise clients, how do some of those mid-level managers become the catalysts for transformation rather just than just interpreters? And you kind of touched on that a little bit as they have to have a certain level of self-confidence and and be a little bit a little bit fearless, but maybe dive a little deeper about what are some of the characteristics of those uh middle out change uh leaders that that you see are are the most successful in the work that you've done.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So in in essence, they are really easy to spot because every organization has people that are always consulted, not openly, but people people gravitate to them and ask for advice. And I'm sure as I'm saying this, everyone has at least one or two people in their head.

unknown:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And they are not usually the ones that are in a specific department. They are just the ones that carry either a lot of institutional knowledge or that simply have a very different angle to um to problems, right? Um maybe some people that have uh a lot of customer touch points, or you know, the people that are in in the customer hotline seat and whatnot. Um so it it usually uh is the ones that uh people gravitate to, that people trust, um, but uh they are also uh usually very quiet. They don't want to be visible. Um yeah, and and that's you know, that's fine, that's okay. But if you strengthen these people um and they actually get a voice, they claim their their seat at the change table. And that's that's the type of people you need in your organization to really excel. So how do you do this? Because you cannot train these people in your organization because that is an echo chamber, sorry to say that, right? Um even if you do individual trainings and whatnot, no one will ever openly speak about what's going on, or because it's over you know, you put on a great face. Right? And the other thing is, um it's it's uh again a paradox in itself. When we have new software implemented, we have several test cycles before we set it live. Or we don't do that with people because if we upgrade what we know, we don't have a test environment. So I offer them a test environment and I put together um small and curated cohorts um and that is cross-industry and cross-hierarchy. Um it's a safe space. We meet um two times a month, so the invested time is very low. There is a self-study portion for the mindset piece um that we are uh teaching. So it's a three to five hour uh time invested per month. So what that does is several things. It gives them uh a testing sandbox, right? They can show up as they are, they can try out things that they have learned in um the workbooks and they can show up with a different side of them that they may not feel comfortable showing yet. So we have a space where they can gain confidence, where they can really build that muscle. And we throw together people from different angles. I was just running a group this morning, and uh there's for example for-profit and non-profit in there. At first glance they would say, I have nothing to tell you. But then but then at the end of the day, you know, it all comes down to the same basics, you know, it all comes down to what are you focusing on, you know, what is your attitude towards things. And it's also asking people and hearing that people can give you advice that are so out of your wheelhouse. So what they are trying out in our close groups, they can directly transform and bring back into the organization because what they will do is they will ask different people and they usually ask.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's interesting because as you were as you were talking about that, it occurs to me in my own experience that I've seen examples of people who go through processes like this, and they were already perhaps the the loud and boisterous and the whatabout askers, if you will, in in meetings. And then there are others who are the exact opposite that were maybe inclined to be rather timid and weren't used to having someone ask them what they thought, and just the simple act of having a group like what you just described in a setting and an environment where they're encouraged to share their expertise. Not only does the project and the transformation benefit, perhaps it also helps develop them as potential leaders because they get a little bit of confidence that maybe they weren't getting in in the everyday of their job, but being through this project, maybe uh and getting asked for their expertise and their perspective and their expertise builds potentially future leaders over an organization that the the company might not have found were it not for this process that you've you've kind of led them through. Is that is that accurate in your view?

SPEAKER_01:

That's absolutely accurate because they would always fall through the cracks of any high potential program, right? They would never be regarded because only the loud voices um are heard. And frankly, in today's time to make the loud voices louder is not really helping us as a as an organization, right? Um and also, you know, to stoke their ego is not really helping us. So, you know, we're much better off at really empowering the the timid people um in the organization that actually have something to say um and have an interest of holding the strings together and actually being a translator. So what I've seen in I've I've uh ran these groups for a year and a half. So on average, about 70% of people get promoted within the first year.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Because they are stepping it up, they are becoming proactive. Um they are saying, hey, you know, if we want to make projects faster, I have a couple of ideas. Would you be open to listen to this? So they actually have um, you know, the courage to step it up and say, hey, you know, I'm I can be vulnerable, I can uh I can bring in my ideas because they have had positive experiences in our closed group. The other the other thing that I just want to throw in as another statistic is that uh almost 80% of the participants are millennials. And they would never get any type of sophisticated training within the organization because they are not the top-notch tier and they are not the hot young guns that are being brought in. So you're basically you're leaving a ton of potential that is unattended right now.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I that makes so much sense. And I and I've had the opportunity to witness exactly what you're describing in some of the organizations, and it was wonderful to see through a transformation process some of these people become uh leaders of their full potential, but it really started with pulling out their their expertise into an environment that they felt confident in sharing and then them gaining that confidence. And I've witnessed what you're describing so many times, and it's so wonderful to see as a leader, but I fear that so many organizations miss that opportunity in the spirit of moving fast and trying to get to a deadline and not taking the opportunity to get the full benefit of the knowledge and expertise uh uh of members of their team, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And uh I mean, the the other paradox that I see is that we are spending a set amount of money every year to upgrade our servers, to see that our cybersecurity is all tucked up, all important things, right? But then on the other hand, we are not tending to a human infrastructure in exactly the same way. Um and we think that it's a one-time upgrade. And instead, we are lagging way behind. You know, if you look at AI models, it's getting updated at the speed of light. Um, so we are also needing to tend to human infrastructure, collective intelligence. So what I offer to companies is not a one-off training. Um, these alumni people remain part of the external ecosystem that I offer, and they can go through continuous upgrades, dip into that community while they are starting to build their in-house ecosystem. And that to me is uh a huge um success factor because they still have the backup. Um at the start of things, they will still be the odd ones out that bring a new type of thinking. So you need to give them some backing where they can go and say, hey, you know, just you know, give me a little bit of a pick-me-up.

SPEAKER_00:

That makes a lot of sense. You know, in my role as a as a consultant, I talk to retailers all the time that feel like they are drounting in tools, whether that is uh, I should say tools and dashboards. It could be things like retail media dashboards or digital shells analytics or supply chain uh uh visibility. And I'm I'm curious as you advise clients um how to cut through the noise and find the actual the wisdom, if you will, clarity on what really matters to the future of their business and how do how do they make all these technologies work? Are there any kind of recurring things uh that you see in terms of how they take this increased flow of data and metrics that perhaps they didn't have 10 years earlier and turn it into action or actionable insights? Well, what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that is such a loaded topic, man.

SPEAKER_00:

Um forgive me.

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's it's good. So um last year I stepped into being uh interim CIO for a couple of months for uh one of my retail clients. So and I can tell you that the other side of the fence is ugly. Um so um I would caution everyone um at this point to add more tools. I think the best investment that you can make is to look at your data. Um right after your people, obviously. But um I always compare what we have, and it's so valid for retail because there's so many different things, as you say. It's like an untended forest. You just have um you have the next software thing sprouting up, and uh it's even worse with um agentic AI and such. So, how do you weed your way through the forest? You know, seriously, uh there is like and at some point you need to bring your machete, and it's not happy, right? Because you need to start breaking things, and that's what happens. Um so what I do a lot with clients is I uh I create a navigation infrastructure for them, and this is um something that is the most profound and yet the most simple thing, but companies don't have it. And I may totally date myself now as starting to get really old, but in my day when when we started driving cars, we had maps, physical maps, right? Went on a road trip, put it on the hood of the car and said, Oh, look, we're here, you know, and this is where we want to go. And this is essentially what companies are lacking. If I look at some of my clients, they have massive amounts of documentation, of tools and everything. They have over 2,000 processes minutely detailed, but no one sees the forest for the trees. So what I do is maps that are high level and static. Because if you go to a certain level, it never changes. Except you are adding yet another system. Same goes for um for data maps, by the way. Um and I don't stick to the common rules, so whoever is uh into any modeling uh strategy hates me from the get-go, right? Um but I am in the business of making things visible and understandable. And uh then I hang these map maps as big printouts in in the meeting rooms, and that really, really helps. And you need to sing for your systems, also for your data, how that's connected. It really answers so many questions. So you need to um start creating transparency. Transparency sometimes is not really wanted by some departments. Um but that's why I do that as an external source. So you know I can cut through the noise, and then once they have it, the people that are empowered through my training can use that as a resource.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, that makes a lot of sense, and it leads to the to the next question I was going to ask you. You know, we're we're obviously seeing a tremendous amount of change in the retail workforce itself. Hybrid working models where not everybody's working in the same office, the same location. Obviously, the use of AI that automates a number of tasks, and a lot of rising expectations around teams that aren't necessarily all in the same place, collaborating and driving towards an ultimate outcome. And I'm just curious what your perspective is on how retail leaders should be thinking about reskilling or upskilling their teams, how communication of distributed teams maybe needs to be done better. And how do you prepare teams, not just for the project they're working on today, but maybe to be an organization that transforms and evolves on an ongoing basis going forward? Do you have any advice that you give maybe senior leaders on what they should be thinking about over the long term, not just today or this this quarter's project or initiative?

SPEAKER_01:

So the um the biggest and best tool I have found is what uh what is called shared mental model. So do we all understand the same thing when we talk about the same thing, right? Um so instead of throwing more communication tools or the next best practice at it, um what I would advise people is to um create artifacts that help you to understand the same things. Um so that can be a very simple glossary. You know, things that are repeatedly used over and over. For example, for an initiative, what is the scope? So when I go into meetings and I hear about ten times in the meeting the scope is clear, it raises red flags for me, right? Um so you know, to to just have uh the the outline, you know, what are what are our guardrails? And I what I keep doing with my groups, and at first they are so irritated, but they keep getting it because it is uh we are creatures of habit. We we learn by repeating. So every meeting and it's almost religious, you know, it's like the prayer. You pull up the same slides, you say, Hey, you know, we set out to do this. And then you bring a visual and you say, This is what we want to have at the end of the game. It really is aligning people around the same thing, right?

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

No, and that that makes a lot of sense. And I I think that there are there are tools that enable it, enable that, even if the team is not all together. But it perhaps, if anything, a distributed team in multiple time zones, that communication that refocus on this is our purpose, this is where our headed, perhaps even gets more important in those scenarios than if it's a team leading an initiative that all works out of the same room in the same same office, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And you know, if you talk distributed teams, uh maybe also across continents, also visuals become so important because language um can be misunderstood. So having a crisp visual of where you're going and why you're doing it, um, super important. Um also would what people keep underestimating is the ground rules uh when you start a project. And um usually from my consulting background, you know, working for large consultancies, it was more of a static thing, you know. Oh, we don't do this and we don't do that. Um and then it's more, you know, it's kind of pushed on to people and it's never good because, you know, hey, I was one of those children, maybe you were too, but whenever somebody told me not to do something, I became I became rebellious, right? Um so it's all it's also about setting these boundaries jointly. Um and uh that's why at the core of our model is values and we define three values that are important uh for a team or for an initiative. And um you say how these show up, you know. If we say trust is important, you know, how do we how do we come together um and and show each other trust? Um so if it's a co-creation process, everyone is bought in. And then when you bring these things up at the start of each meeting and say, hey, remember our three core values, it you know, it rings true for people. You can also cycle around and say, hey, for the start of it, give me one example how uh one of those values showed up in a positive way. So it it uh it is starting to become a self-reinforcing cycle, right?

SPEAKER_00:

No, and it's interesting because what I think you're describing uh kind of uh is the the very antithesis of retail as a learning organization. In other words, the retailers that I I think do best think like startups, even if they aren't still a startup in the context of size or the the amount of time that they've been in business. And I'm curious, your your concept of digital wisdom, how does it connect to that? How how can retail leaders uh build a culture of curiosity, of it's okay to experiment and potentially fail at something, but learn from it and make learning and and and iterating kind of part of the the DNA of an organization as it as it moves forward in the future.

SPEAKER_01:

Um so essentially it it falls back to mindset, right? You want to you want to create uh and that's an intrinsic thing for uh for core people, you want to empower them to um go beyond their known fence line, right? Um and you want to empower them to bring people together uh into smaller groups to discuss things, and that's when naturally innovation happens. Um so if you give them permission, they would usually come up with very creative ways to to um come up with new things to do or find improvements and so on. Um so I think we've we've all overcomplicated things that it's like, oh my god, we need an innovation culture, you know, and maybe we just need to need to pull the stops out for some of the people, and and they are getting everyone else uh excited. Um so that's one piece. The other core principle that I think, and that's also a mindset thing, we talk about ecosystems, and ecosystems are um generally cyclical, you know, they run in cycles, um but we all function linear. So, you know, we we cannot preach one thing and do the other thing. So yeah, I mean it's like it's it's uh right now we are killing our own ideas through that. So that means if you give people the freedom to to play around with things or if you ask their opinion, you need to give them a little bit of breathing space to play. And that doesn't mean that they need, you know, ten days out of the year or something. It's just it it's maybe uh it's not like asking them every five minutes, got it yet? Huh huh? What what? You know? Um and also not rushing from one initiative to the next because they don't you know, there's so many ideas in the organization, but they don't have any breathing space in terms of just mind capacity, right? Because we are what we have gotten so good at starting things. You know, it's like it's always ten projects going in parallel. Well, you know, maybe we can just slim that down a little bit and then we fix our innovation problem. So but that also starts at the very top, you know. Um and I run a workshop that's called Mindset Before Machines. And I and I do that with leadership teams, it's it's quite fun. Because they come in with with a technology that they think they need, right? And by the time you kind of you go through the process with them, they're like, well, wait, but now we talked for two hours and we didn't talk technology. It's like, oh right, yeah, it's an organizational problem.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, and that's the interesting thing, is that uh in in some cases, it's not how how are we going to implement this technology, is is do we need it and and why do we need it, and how will ultimately the customer benefit their internal uh resources. Store associates, uh, for example, how will they benefit from it? How will they make their job easier? And it's so interesting that that that dialogue, that communication that you referenced doesn't always happen. And I think it's going to evolve the way senior leaders need to lead initiatives, which is to do as much asking why as they do asking how uh about things, because that that's that's part of where innovation I think comes from, and and just uh being task focused instead of outcome focused uh is perhaps uh at the core of some of the things that that you really guide some of your your clients through, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I would also argue that most retailers, what they have in technology stack right now, they only use to 50%, and that's a high assumption.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Yeah. Um I've witnessed just that very thing, so yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So it's it's rather the question of how can we optimize what we already have without adding yet another thing. And I know that's a little bit contrary because boy, I mean, these software companies, they are good at selling stuff, right? Um and uh we also need to uh cut back a little bit on seriously, I think it's fear of missing out. It's like, oh my god, oh my god. But there's so much of value in the organization, be it data, be it uh systems that just need a little tweaking, um, that you can do a lot with very little.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. You know, the the last thing I wanted to ask you is maybe to look forward into the to the future a little bit. And and I'm curious where you see uh the next wave of transformation going and what does maybe the digitally wise organization look like three, four, five years down the road? And do you have any advice that you would give retail executives that want to, to the degree possible, future-proof their teams and build a culture that is effective at innovating and using technology as a tool to drive their business forward? Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01:

So a digitally wise organization um expands their architecture team, and it is looking at different layers of architecture, it is looking at the human architecture, it is looking at um the technical architecture, and also what I call uh orientation, you know, the uh what artifacts do we have to actually make informed decisions? Um and uh obviously also looking at data in an entirely different way. So wisdom is where all these things converge and where you are making decisions that doesn't topple one or the other, that actually strengthens and complements um everything you already have. That is the wise organization. And that would mean that uh maybe there's a little bit the foot taken off the gas for just upping the technology budget we have every year. Um, and you would also look at you know investments uh in a much broader way.

SPEAKER_00:

That makes a lot of sense. Barbara, this has been such uh you know an enlightening conversation, and you've reminded us a lot that transformation isn't just a technology project, it's a people project uh every bit as much. It occurs to me that retailers and brands can invest in all the AI, automation, data analytics in the world, but if they don't invest in people and in culture that bring these tools to life, they will never realize the full value of that initiative. And you you just uh kind of firmed up uh that perspective, I think in my mind, and hopefully in our listeners as well. I know that the work that you do at the Digital Wisdom Collective shows that digital maturity begins with human maturity, with leadership, with trust, as you spoke to, and collaboration as the foundation of every innovation that follows. And so I just want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving, I think certainly me and I think our audience something uh to think about. So thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

You bet. And for our listeners, if your organization is navigating through digital transformation, I haven't met an organization in retailing that isn't right now, and wants to understand how to align technology with purpose and people, I'd invite you uh to visit Barbara's website, the digitalwisdomcollective.com, to learn more about her work and ways in which you can think differently about innovation and technology and how it's used to drive your business forward. And so with that, I want to thank everybody for watching. I'm Scott Benedict, and for the Digital Front Door, thanks for listening.