In this episode, we speak with Onaiza Drabu, a digital transformation consultant for UNICEF, to draw ideas and inspiration for our digital transformation journey at UNDP.
Today, everything is online. If it is not online ... did it actually happen? Onaiza Drabu, a digital transformation consultant, asks. In this episode, we speak with Onaiza about how digital technologies are reshaping our world. How we are seen and remembered, and how we connect with others depends on our digital footprint and engagement with online communities. Through our digital transformation journey, we can adapt to this new world and continue to evolve with it.
Elyse:
Welcome to Digital What?, a podcast series where we join UNDP personnel and experts in conversation about the digital communications questions you’ve always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
Today we speak with Onaiza Drabu, a digital transformation consultant for UNICEF. Onaiza is based in Nairobi, Kenya but we caught up with her in Delhi, India, where she spends a lot of her time writing, researching, and digging up cultural artifacts and memories about her Kashmiri heritage. Growing up, it seemed like all the media talked about when it came to her home was conflict, so she took matters into her own hands and challenged the erasure of her culture and world by digitizing it.
Onaiza:
I feel like home is always Kashmir. It centers around everything I do and also because it's such a special place. I feel like I am the designated storyteller and keeper of my memory, of my family's memory, of my culture’s memory.
Elyse:
The sun is just rising in Delhi, so I imagined if this interview was in person, we’d probably be sipping coffee right now -- or at least I would be, I’m not really a morning person. So I asked Onaiza, how would I recognize her if we were meeting in a coffee shop?
Onaiza:
You’d look for someone with, like, crazy hair and big orange glasses. But definitely I’d say I'm an anthropologist. And I'd also tell you that I'm a folklorist because I work on Kashmiri folklore. And that’s how I usually describe myself, as a reteller of stories. And I'd also tell you I work a lot in the corporate sphere, in non-profits. That's what I'd say professionally. But otherwise, I’d tell you, I'm a writer.
Elyse:
And if I could get her a coffee, her order would be...
Onaiza:
I’m a single latte person, although I’m drinking black coffee at 7 in the morning [laughter].
Elyse:
Alright, now that we’ve had our coffee, let’s get into this. Throughout this podcast series we’ve been talking with experts about how we can stay up to date with the UNDP’s digital transformation. Now that we have an idea as to how we can as individuals become better digital communicators, we wanted to take a moment to step back and think about what digital transformation means.
Onaiza:
I always define digital transformation as a reimagining work in a digital age. So reimagining everything we do except online. And it always brings back the classic philosophical question of our times that if it's not online, did it even happen? So we don't really have an option to transform digitally. Everything needs to be online. We need to use digital technology to solve a lot of our problems. And that is, in a sense what digital transformation is, adapting to the modern world of technology, adapting in a way where everything we do is seamlessly intertwined with technology.
Elyse:
To be meaningful, Onaiza said this integration needs to be both internal and external. But what does that really mean?
Onaiza:
Basically, when you say internal, it means it could be how we log into our computer every day. It could be where we work. It could be where we store our information. It could be how we interact with our colleagues, how we collaborate on documents, where we store the documents, how the documents are archived. It could be all of that, which in a traditional way or maybe even 10 years ago would be done very differently. How that is done now is digital transformation in essence.
When we talk about external digital transformation? It could be how...if I'm a publication, how my audience reads my content, how my audience engages with my content. The processes, the ways have changed quite a lot. So all of this requires us to reimagine our organizational strategy, our organizational structure, just basically what we do on a daily basis. And I think that's what digital transformation entails. It's a heavy word. When I often tell people, they don't understand what I mean when I say I work in the digital transformation product rollout. But I basically tell them that what I do is I teach people how to use technology in their everyday. And it could be as simple as getting people to use Microsoft Word online and as complicated as rolling out a chat based interface for organizations to replace their traditional ways of communicating.
Elyse:
Onaiza has a unique perspective when it comes to digital transformation due to her training as an anthropologist and semiotician. She pays attention to the history and meaning behind human communication. She calls it a people-centered approach. However, as much as she tries to bring this all down to earth, she still faces challenges.
Onaiza:
The first reaction you're met with at every single meeting where you introduce a digital transformation project, or you even allude to it, is resistance.
Elyse:
Do you have tomatoes being thrown at you?
Onaiza:
I don't have tomatoes being thrown at me, but I have a lot of very strange looks and scoffs. And it's bound to happen especially in organizations like the U.N., where you have a range of different levels of competence, different levels of familiarity with technology within the workforce, as well as different levels of infrastructure. So you have someone sitting in a field office, in a far off area with like little phone connectivity, let alone Internet connectivity and you expect them to use the cloud? They will, of course, scoff at you, because that is the reality of an organization like the UN. And then you have people who have used telephones and messengers and pagers in the start of their career, even in the middle of their career, and now you expect them to, you know, be chat-based and completely digital and device-agnostic. And then you have younger millennials who were born with technology who for whom this is an expectation. So how do we reconcile this person sitting in a headquarter location and then someone else sitting in a field office location, both of whom want to use similar technologies, but are at such different levels, both in terms of learning and ability, but also in terms of, you know, how they work with technology. How do you reconcile that? So this, I would say, is really, really, really big challenge. In reality, how you solve this problem is by understanding what each of them wants.
Elyse:
And of course, what we want is to feel agile and free to express ourselves as individuals when we communicate. Not to feel suddenly constrained by this technological learning curve. Resistance to change is common, so at UNDP it’s worth considering why people resist digital transformation in the first place.
Onaiza:
What I think is the biggest fault in all digital transformation exercises is standardized communication. I absolutely hate standard emails that go out which tell you, okay, we're rolling out this, this and this. This is the learning material and this is where you’ll find it, because how I interpret it is very different from how you interpret it. And it's very different from someone who sitting in a field office will interpret it. And it needs to be a very bottom up approach. It needs to be an approach which is informed by all these people from all these levels. And it needs to be brought together in a way where we address everyone's needs.
Elyse:
So, considering all of this, what would a digital transformation would look like?
Onaiza:
In essence, it would mean a greater level of connectedness, a greater level of freedom and a greater level, greater ease of working, really, working real time, multiple partners. Be the government, be the nonprofit, be the other U.N. organizations. And the ability to just get rid of everyday problems.
Elyse:
And of course, we can do that through a digital transformation.
Onaiza:
If you were to look at an organization like UNDP, my first sense to internally digitally transform would be to be able to work on collaborative projects with colleagues, to be able to be location and device independent, which means you could work from wherever, whatever device. You could be able to access all of your files, all of your information, all of the things that you work with. So you need not carry your office laptop everywhere. You could be working on your mobile phone on a beach and be doing exactly the same thing that you would be doing on your office desktop. It could mean chat based softwares that replace emails which means you're not actually going back and forth on emails, you're working on a chat based platform where all of your information is being stored. And if I were to join your team tomorrow, I'd see what's been happening for the last month. What that leads to is knowledge management, so everything's online, everything's on cloud. Everyone has access to most knowledge products where it's easy for any colleague who joins to come in and have a look at what all countries are doing.
Elyse:
So once we do all this… I was wondering at what point do we actually know we’ve reached a digital transformation?
Onaiza:
There is no one point where you will be able to say, OK, done were digitally transformed. There's always going to be differing levels of digital maturity. So I would say that if you've started your already on the way to digital transformation. If people are already starting to use cloud-based services, I don't think there will be a destination for the organization. There will be destinations for teams. There will be destinations for offices. There will be destinations for let's say regions even. But as an organization, I think it's not something you really can say is done, because by the time we're five years later, there'll be like a completely new set of technologies.
Elyse:
As Onaiza says, a digital transformation is not only inevitable, but it is also incredibly beneficial.
Onaiza:
I think one takeaway that I've had from this whole process is that digital transformation is a change management exercise, is a cultural change exercise, it is a behavior change exercise. It is as much an operations or organizational strategy exercise and it is as much a technology exercise, but it is also a very people-centric exercise. I think very often people forget that it's all of us whose work is going to be changed. All of us whose daily lives are going to be changed by a digital transformation. So it needs to be really address the needs of the people who are to be using it. It's something that needs inputs from colleagues all over the world, especially field office colleagues, because I feel like that’s where it all breaks. So it needs to take into account the needs as well as the motivations, as well as infrastructure and learning capacity of all of these people.
Elyse:
As we are looking at other organizations and individuals for inspiration. We gain an awareness of our own digital transformation journey. And while adopting new digital communications practices, we can still be ourselves in the process. We can draw strength from our experiences and even from our spirit animals. Like Onaiza, who considers herself to be one of the strongest and most adaptable of creatures...
Onaiza:
It is a wild horse running in all directions, trying to do whatever it can do. Like throw kicks in air, like dance a bit, jump around and just it's moving all the time. Moving from project to project in an open field.
Elyse:
This episode of Digital What!? is produced by Oscar Durand and myself. Our theme music is by Lemon Guo, and additional music is by Chris Zabriskie. Sound design by myself. Special thanks to Onaiza Drabu, digital transformation consultant for UNICEF, for taking the time to speak with us and to Christina MacGillivray for recording the tape sync. To listen and subscribe go to wherever you find your podcasts or DigitalNow dot UNDP dot org.
I’m Elyse Blennerhassett. Stay with us.