As I have been focused on the various roles of digital transformation, researching how it affects individuals across the organization, I stumbled on an interesting article in the NY Times that embodied the phenomenon in a way that hadn’t occurred to me.
This article was around the ground game of the coming election (2016 US Presidential) in Las Vegas Nevada. Shadowing a doorbell ringer, a person who goes door to door to remind people of the importance of voting in the election. An offhand reference to this doorbell ringer consulting her smartphone to find the next target of her efforts.
In that simple phrase “looking up the next door to knock on their cellphone” is packed a lot of the transformation and indeed, disruption that has occurred.
Prior to the advent of mapping software, databases of voter register rolls, and cross referenced information on last touch, how often touched, how receptive to prior interactions, this job, assigned to an unpaid volunteer would be much less effective.
Indeed, the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012 highlighted a degree of sophistication, technical prowess, and upending the completely inadequate efforts by his opponents, the Republicans. I recall the disbelief of the punditocracy in where all these Democrat voters were coming from, swamping their models and polls. At the time, I was in the dark as to the “how” but I certainly knew there were tidal shifts underfoot.
All this disruption, driven through digital transformation. The Get Out the Vote efforts will never be the same again, for better or worse.
We do live in interesting times, and the ride is an E-Ticket for sure.
