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Getting frustrated with your Digital Insurgency? Here are a couple of examples of other 'ground-up' movements that have driven success! Get you excited!

We need a different kind of insurgency: a reformist insurgency. One that doesn't seek to replace the existing order, but compels it to undertake critical reforms. A digital transformation of this sort is not dependent on a few key positions or tools, but on the collective efforts of the entire organization.

Work out what you can control and share your successes. Pick three pieces of information that would enable your team to drive decisions. That is where you add value. You know your organization, the business process and issues. Use that to your advantage. We wouldn't get an Army guy to redesign the cockpit for the next stealth fighter - but we definitely want to know how to make information management better with your team.

As our world increasingly embraces digital transformation, organizations, military or otherwise, are on the hunt for effective solutions to upskill their workforce and enable talent mobility. Today, I'd like to shed light on both the Australian Army's ServeOn campaign and the Canadian Government's micro-mission initiative.

Driving a Digital Insurgency can be dangerous work - as we discussed two weeks ago - your boss might be 100% against it ("But! Nobody told you to do that!" | LinkedIn). You can accept the risk - or reduce it.

The grievance is simple: We live in 2021, but our office is in 1998. Why am I using Excel spreadsheets to capture data? Why are we sending information by email to each individual person? Why are staff officers chasing information for weeks for a PowerPoint that is out of date once the data is inputted? Why do most soldiers not have access to any information? This is what people have been doing for 80 years. Why do the staff and clerks have to go to the data - why can't the data come to them?

What is your mid-level boss so afraid of? I was talking to a Digital Insurgent I know this week, and he shared something I hear often inside a bureaucracy. He was driving change and making the organization better - and then his boss dropped that great line, "But - nobody told you to do that!" Because he is in the military, it was followed up with a "Have you spoken to the Chief (Army Commander) about this?"