A simple question, you probably assume. Is it though?
We recently completed a digital strategy for a super client and as part of the interviews we did, one of the stakeholders took issue with our use of the word digital: “Digital is not a noun.” This statement genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Partly because - despite my reputation as being the grammar police in my house - I can never remember what a noun or a verb or an adjective is (sorry mum), but also because, perhaps naively, I assumed we were past that. Don’t we all agree that “digital” is everything? Your phone, ordering something from Amazon, guiltily ordering your Burger King at the motorway services though their touch screens (again, sorry mum). It’s everywhere.
Suitably chastised, I placed the idea for this blog on a shelf marked “must write.” In the office, other than the running gags about my constant cap wearing and my mahoosive headphones on every Teams call, there is a broad assumption that if there is a question about digital techy stuff, then I will have an answer. So we now have an #askgareth Slack channel. The first question the team asked: “What is Digital?” So yep, it’s unavoidable.
Following the interview with the stakeholder, we decided to define what AAB Consulting meant by “digital.” Our trusty friend Google took me down some rabbit holes but kept leading me back to a definition from our peers over at McKinsey Digital, written back in 2015.
It’s a good piece of work – even if 7-years-old - but simple it is not:
“It’s tempting to look for simple definitions, but to be meaningful and sustainable, we believe that digital should be seen less as a thing and more a way of doing things.” McKinsey - What Digital Really Means, July 1, 2015.
I agree with a lot of this statement, but it doesn’t feel contemporary, so I started asking people I trust and respect how they would define “digital.”
Don Smith – Don describes himself now as an inventor and disruptor. But back in 2009, when we first met over coffee, he worked in advertising. Don was an award-winning creative director about to make a very public shift into the new world of “digital,” which was quite a big deal at the time. I was a client of the digital agency he was considering joining, and he was doing his due diligence. After a hugely successful 8 years at the firm, Don is very qualified to define digital.
When I asked him, his initial response made me smile. “I’ve never really thought about it,” which if you know Don is surprising as he has thought about most things. His second response was less surprising.
“‘Digital’ is a word similar to ‘Creative.’ So open to interpretation that it has become abstract and meaningless. My fingers are digits, I am digital. My computer runs on a digital language, it is digital. The airport I am sitting in runs on a software based operational system, it is digital. So, me, my environment and my tools are all digital. Everything is digital. I am a creative person in a digital world. I am everything and nothing. I’ve become meaningless. I need to work on that.”
So if digital is everywhere and everything, is it ubiquitous or meaningless?
Next, I turned to Martin Dowson – Martin is a thought leader in all things business design. For more than 2 decades he has been working on how good design can deliver good digital experience for some of Britain’s biggest brands. On his podcast he goes toe to toe with “big design” thinkers and academics on all manner of topics related to experience and design, which power the digital tools and products we all now take for granted. Disclaimer: I did bribe Martin with a cocktail in order to secure this quote, but it seemed like a fair exchange for 5 minutes of his brain time.
“Digital has become a blanket term. At its best it reflects a recognition that so much of our lives are mediated through technology and that this requires a new set of skills, ethics and ways of working. At its worst it is a term for the modernisation of legacy infrastructure that is technology-led without considering the complexity of systemic change. If you aren’t talking about Business Transformation WHILE talking about Digital then you aren’t doing it right.”
So to some degree they agree; “digital” may now be used so often that it has lost all meaning. For a different perspective, I asked my mum (sorry mum) what she thinks “digital” means. My mum is a sprightly Apple-addicted woman in her 70s with a degree in English Literature. She emigrated to the US when I was in my early twenties and only returned to the UK in 2019. Without digital, I think it’s fair to say my mum would have a very different relationship with me and with her grandson, and the last couple of years would have been pretty lonely (as it would have been for all of us). But here’s her take:
“To me digital is A) the opposite of manual, B) a means to greater communication and access to a wider world of information than was ever possible before. It enables me to keep in touch with a wider group of people, gives me immediate access, it’s opened up a world of information and resources to keep me fed, amused & engaged. However, digital machines have added a layer of complexity making it necessary to have specialists repairing them. It has made it more difficult for ordinary people to repair their own devices. It can cause some people to be isolated if they do not understand or don’t have access to the digital world.”
I’ve already spent too long avoiding answering my own question, and as is apparent if you ask 3 people you get 3 answers, not one. For me, I would answer “what is digital?” this way.
Digital is Empowering – Not to dive down the web3 rabbit hole just yet, but the rapid digitisation and “smart-ification” of our lives has empowered us to live more efficiently, if sometimes only marginally so…“Alexa turn off the living room!... ALEXA living room off!!” IoT (internet of things) is everywhere, even if people don’t realise it yet.
Digital is Enabling - Digital connectivity has enabled a digital agency I mentor in Shetland to work with clients in Spain whom they have never met. The economic and cultural impact of this is obvious.
Digital is Educational – On an episode of Stranger Things, I watched as the local sheriff went through a library card system to try and find content on microfiche. Our access to information (and misinformation - see “Digital is Dangerous”), is unlike anything we could possibly have imagined at the time outside of science fiction, at least. Our ability to self-learn has been rocket boosted, turbo charged and intercooled. I even learned what all those words mean from digital.
Digital is a Crutch – It has become a shortcut or an excuse: “I can’t do that task. The wifi is down.” We have come to lean on it, perhaps too much: “I don’t need to know how to spell. I have spell check.”
Digital is Dangerous – whether it’s social media addiction or the assumption that “everyone” gets it, we are in danger of leaving huge proportions of our society behind if we don’t carefully consider how, when and why we deploy digital technologies. As mentioned above, our societal checks and balances have been lost, leading to almost more misinformation online than facts. (Oooh, a little bit of politics.) Martin also touches on it in his definition, but Digital Transformation done well will change the entire shape of your organisation from top to bottom. I have some concerns about Digital Transformation as a phrase (another subject for the “must write” blog list), but what it does not mean is automating and digitising processes that are already broken or superfluous.
Digital allows us to be MORE human – It’s true, I 100% believe that this is where we are headed. The combination of Automation, AI, IoT and digitisation will (hopefully) not result in our lives being run by machines but will allow the best human qualities to shine through. We’ll be better able to do what we are best at: Communicate, Support, Create (this is not an exhaustive list).
So, “digital” may not be a noun in the Oxford Dictionary kind of way, but a large part of our society uses it as such, which we should respect. “Digital” means lots of things to lots of different people. It may be overused a bit, so it’s a word we should treat with caution. Digital can do an awful lot of good in the right hands and an awful lot of bad, if misused or misapplied – just like the technologies it implies usage of.
If anyone has an alternative definition of “Digital,” I am taking answers on a postcard - virtual ones, of course.
Photo: No, not Inigo Montoya's fabled 6 fingered man from The Princess Bride, but a hand with 6 digits should be able to txt faster...a glimpse at our future? Courtesy of Wiki Commons.