The day to day experience

After you’ve started the conversation about digital transformation, the next step is understanding what your team is actually experiencing day to day. Not what they think they should be experiencing, or what the software is supposed to do, but what actually happens when they sit down at their desk on a weekday morning.

This is why we always insist on spending time with the people who actually use your digital tools every day. Not asking them to demonstrate something, but literally sitting alongside them as they go about their normal work. You’d be amazed what you discover.

For example, a team member discovered when sitting with someone else in their team that they had been manually exporting newsletter signups from their website and then importing them into Mailchimp, when that could have been an automation that the website did for them automatically—something that could literally save hours, every week for the team.

Your team members are often digital innovation experts without realising it. They’ve spent months or years figuring out how to work around limitations, combine different tools in creative ways, or develop processes that make their work more efficient. Before you change anything, understand what they’ve already figured out.

The most revealing question we ask is this: "If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about how you use digital at work, what would it be?" The answers are rarely what you'd expect.

It's not usually "a faster computer" or "better software." It's more often things like "I wish I could update someone's record without having to log into three different systems" or "I'd love to be able to see all of someone's interactions with us in one place."

These responses tell you much more about what needs fixing than any consultancy ever could. They’re coming from people who understand both the organisation’s mission and the practical realities of delivering services. When someone says they wish they could see all of someone’s interactions in one place, they’re not asking for a fancy dashboard, they’re asking for better ways to provide person centred support.

Emerging Patterns

Once you understand these daily realities, patterns start to emerge. You might notice that multiple team members are doing similar workarounds, or that the same information is being entered into several different systems. These patterns point to systemic issues that are worth addressing properly rather than with more creative workarounds.

But here’s the crucial bit: not every frustration needs a technological solution. Sometimes what looks like a technology problem is actually a training issue, or a communication problem, or even just a case of someone never being shown a feature that already exists.

The conversation with your team shouldn’t just be about problems, though. It should also be about moments when technology works really well for them. What tools do they genuinely enjoy using? When do they feel like technology is helping rather than hindering their work? Understanding what works well gives you clues about what good digital experiences look like for your specific organisation.

The goal of this exercise isn't to fix everything immediately. It's to build a clear picture of where technology is serving your mission well and where it’s getting in the way. Once you have that picture, you can start making informed decisions about what’s worth changing and what’s working fine as it is.

Understanding your team’s daily digital reality means accepting that the gap between how systems are supposed to work and how they actually work is often where the most valuable insights live. Your team’s creative workarounds aren’t problems to be solved, they’re innovations to be understood and potentially built upon.

When you approach digital improvement from this perspective, you’re not imposing solutions on people. You’re collaborating with them to build tools and processes that amplify the expertise they’ve already developed through experience.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to translate these daily realities into practical improvements that actually stick. Because understanding the problems is only half the battle.