Each month, “Araujo on Transformation” episodes feature conversations with Charles Araujo, founder of the Institute for Digital Transformation. We all hear a lot (too much?) about Digital Transformation, but Charles is working to ground that platitude in reality. An engaging speaker and best-selling author, Charles is spreading the gospel of business change through an equally human and technological lens. Today, we talk about human-driven innovation, Walmart vs. Amazon, and more.
Episode 2
In this episode: Charlie and I talk about how companies can survive the disruptions of COVID-19. Or, indeed, how they might come out of this challenging period even stronger than before. Uncertainty, Charlie says, is certainly the elephant in the room, and it can be debilitating. But there is a secret sauce that allows some businesses to work through uncertainty, and it involves hearty doses of both cultural agility and creativity.
Throughout our conversation, Charlie comes back to one perfect case study for resilience during coronavirus through agility and creativity: a high-end Chicago restaurant.
Charlie says that if you’re an enterprise leader, the biggest mistake you could make would be to see this as temporary. To just wait it out. Leaders have have a massive opportunity to use this time to experiment, to play with ideas, and to allow humanity and empathy to flow through. There is a silver lining here if we choose to see it. And we the customers will remember the businesses that treated us well, that helped us get through, when this is all over.
You can also stream the audio-only version of this episode:
Highlights
'Those organizations that have a sort of cultural readiness are going to be much more resilient in the face of uncertainty, whether it's pandemic-induced or whatever else.' #CloudWars Click To Tweet 'How can we reassemble this in a way that is more appropriate for the circumstances today? That is an act of creativity.' #CloudWars Click To Tweet 'We're going to remember the organizations that not only stepped up and donated money, but the organizations that managed to keep a degree of humanity in their interactions with us.' #CloudWars Click To Tweet
Cloud Wars Live Digital All-Stars
Charles Araujo is one of our regular Digital All-Stars. The All-Stars are experts who will appear in regular video podcasts focused on the critical themes shaping (and re-shaping!) the business world in the digital age of 2020. Our intention is to provide regular chunks of timely ideas, insights and conversations on high-priority subjects from industry veterans with diverse backgrounds.