Review: Crossing the Digital Faultline by Sri Manchala

Sri Manchala is a transformation expert, advising business leaders about not only the shining promise of new technologies, but also the hidden faultlines under the surface, in Crossing the Digital Faultline: 10 Leadership Rules to Win in the Age of Digitalization and Uncertainty.

Manchala begins his comprehensive overview by recounting his experience in Japan in March 2011. He and associates arrived the day before a huge earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck the island nation. Observing the widespread chaos and changes, he took charge, successfully navigating through the turmoil to ensure that he and his cohort would be able to leave as expeditiously as possible.

He compares the quake’s effects to the way that digitalization, often unseen and unexpected, has hit and destroyed many once-iconic businesses. He examines the factors contributing to this digital crisis, which has made itself felt acutely in the past decade – and especially now in the Covid crisis – and offers suggestions for how business leaders can cope.

Digitalization has forced a new template for all businesses, business leaders, and staff, as well as for consumers, tech initiators, and indeed, for all of us. In this global upheaval, large, once-stable organizations may no longer have the advantage; the so-called, giants, or Goliaths, can be quickly undercut by small start-ups characterized by Manchala as a horde of “Davids” wielding the latest technologies and having a greater understanding of the new consumer base.

Factors affecting the new template include the rise of Asian commerce, and the change in communications, with smartphones on nearly every person, many of them children. Auto sales, once an obvious example of personal contact between salesman and buyer, are now shaped by consumer ratings and even online sales and remote delivery. Manchala reminds readers that Amazon was once mainly involved in selling used books, since now it provides countless other innovative services, moving with the times.

To radically transform a more traditionally structured business in this largely uncharted environment will require a new style of leader, one that Manchala describes as the Methodical Innovator: one who is ready and willing to explore the faultlines affecting his or her company and, using the ten rules established by the author, move ahead dynamically, while remembering that change will be continual: “Remember that there is no such thing as an ‘end state.’”

Manchala is the chairman and CEO of Trianz, a Silicon Valley digital transformation services firm, serving global corporations across multiple industries. A member of the Forbes Technology Council, Sri is also the founder of Trasers – a first-of-its-kind company that provides digital transformation data and insights for business and IT leaders, giving the book a unique perspective and authority. He writes comfortably, at times drawing from life experiences, such as how he dealt with a child who is spending too much time with online gaming or accepted the corrections detailed by a superior officer in the military when a proposed foray did not take into account crucial, concealed dangers. His encyclopedic manual uses accessible, credible illustrations, charts, statistics and examples that will engage all readers with an investment in the topic.

There are many books on leadership, but fewer that take on this essential topic, and still fewer that cover the ground so clearly and comprehensively, which is especially useful in the current crisis. Following Manchala’s strategies and recommendations, potential innovators can move their enterprises into the new era, identifying and overcoming the many hidden issues in the increasingly complex new economy.