Maslow’s Hierarchy for Digital Transformation

⇨ Needs of employees in terms of Digital tools and capabilities follow a hierarchy very similar to Maslow's.

⇨ Fulfilling the basic needs of employees/organization is foundational, in order to further build your Digital capabilities to fulfill higher level needs.

⇨ A stepwise approach of fulfilling the Digital needs of your employees and organization is the best and in my mind, the only approach to plan a successful Digital transformation.

We live in an era of Empathy driven innovation and disruption. If you peel the layers of the onion, you will find that technologies being used by many disruptors were not radically new technology. The key driver behind these successful disruptors, in my mind, was the ability to identify a customer need and provide a solution. That is why I believe understanding customer needs, leveraging Emotional Quotient and Empathy skills is going to become one of the most important expertise organizations need to develop to stay relevant in the Digital age.

No other framework has more prominence or acceptability, as far as understanding levels of human needs are concerned, than Maslow's hierarchy. Marketers have leveraged this to push the needs of their customer to next level for decades now. Now is the right time to extrapolate this hierarchy to Digital Transformation perspective.