The Rider and Elephant, and What They Mean for Digital Transformation

You might be familiar with the Rider and Elephant analogy as it relates to organizational change management.  It is a metaphor introduced by University of Virginia psychologist, Jonathan Haidt that attempts to describe human psychology by representing the rider as our logical or rational side and the elephant as our emotional side.  Perched atop the elephant, the rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader.  But the rider’s control is precarious, because the rider is so small relative to the elephant.  Anytime the six-ton elephant and the rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose.  He’s completely overmatched.  I’ve been reading one of Dr. Haidt’s books, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” and was struck by what his research that shows.  When confronted with a decision, the elephant “leans” toward a decision and the rider “justifies” that decision.  This means that when convincing people of the need to transform, you must convince the elephant.  Yes, the elephant.  Successful digital transformation requires appealing to the emotional or intuitive side first.  Being an engineer by training, I found this fairly difficult to stomach.

Digital Transformation Succeeds When You Convince the Elephant

ARC maintains that digital transformation is a business transformation made possible by digital technologies.  Despite decades of experience implementing digital technologies, companies continue to hit walls when leveraging that technology to its fullest extent.  We witnessed this with the plethora of abandoned (implemented but ignored) technologies around smart transmitters and advance process controls.  These technologies fell flat mainly due to poor change management.  The elephant leans away from change.  The bigger challenge with digital transformation is that it affects larger swaths of personnel and departments.  There’s no one-size-fits-all digital transformation package that a company can buy and implement.  Digital transformation is a difficult slog through the jungles of goal setting, self-evaluation, self-awareness, conflicting internal priorities, and culture change. 

Innovation can’t wait, and your organization’s long-term success depends on it.  However, innovation is the easy part.  If you can’t implement it, you lose.  There’s a reason the metaphor uses an elephant for the intuitive, emotional side.  Companies have found that great solutions dropped on unsuspecting employees tend to fail.  Digital transformation efforts are subject to the same dynamics, but on steroids.  This is due to the larger number of affected people and the subcultures of the various departments.  If your implementation plan doesn’t have a plan for the elephant, it isn’t really a plan.