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In many executive meetings, digital transformation appears to be going well. Dashboards glow green. Adoption charts trend upward.
System uptime looks healthy. Progress reports reassure boards that investments are delivering results.
But there are instances when all indicators are correct on the dashboard, and yet, customers struggle with usage plateaus.
Transformation enters a slow motion, then quietly stalls. This contradiction is one of the most common and least discussed blind spots in digital leadership.
Dashboards have their place in digital transformation journeys, but alone, they are not enough to measure sustained growth.
Organisations can believe that they are transformation-ready because dashboards say so. But dashboards do not measure confidence. They measure activity.
A green dashboard can coexist with deep user discomfort. Systems can be live while trust is fragile. Processes can be automated while people quietly avoid them.
From the executive floor, everything appears to be moving. On the ground, momentum has already slowed.
Emotional connection
This is the paradox of digital transformation: the more senior you are, the less failure you directly experience. Dashboards compress reality. They summarise thousands of lived experiences into neat indicators.
While abstraction is necessary, it also creates distance from frustration, from fear, and from the social cost of things not working.
Dashboards must be coupled with fostering an emotional connection with customers. Trust is the bridge that connects digital solutions and consumer confidence to adopt and use them repeatedly.
Leaders experience digital failure as a statistic. Customers and frontline employees experience it as a moment. A failed transaction, a confusing interface, or a slow response may register as a minor deviation on a dashboard.
To a customer, it may signal risk. To an employee, it may signal exposure. These moments shape behaviour far more than performance metrics.
This is why, in many instances, adoption often stalls after launch. Early usage may be triggered by curiosity, and sustained usage reflects confidence.
Dashboards are excellent at capturing the former, but weak at revealing the latter. This is where a trust infrastructure must be maintained through regular engagement with customers, listening to their voice, and ensuring help is always near.
When adoption slows, are you the leader who often asks for more data, more dashboards, more reports, more analytics?
But the problem is rarely a lack of information. It is lack of proximity to the customer. Customers can forgive an experience friction for some time, but they do not forgive abandonment.
True readiness is not reflected in uptime or transaction volumes alone. It is reflected in confidence under pressure—confidence that systems will work when it matters, and that help will be available when they do not.
Until leaders recognise this blind spot, organisations will continue to invest heavily in digital systems while quietly wondering why change never quite arrives. That is why trust must be treated as an early warning system.
Trust answers questions metrics cannot: do customers feel protected and cared for? In the event of a service friction, will help be readily available?
Do service failures strengthen or weaken customer confidence? It is important to appreciate that trust appears before loyalty, advocacy and long-term usage.
Dr Kiburu is an enthusiast of applied technology for the advancement of society
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In many executive meetings, digital transformation appears to be going well. Dashboards glow green. Adoption charts trend upward.
System uptime looks healthy. Progress reports reassure boards that investments are delivering results.
But there are instances when all indicators are correct on the dashboard, and yet, customers struggle with usage plateaus.
Transformation enters a slow motion, then quietly stalls. This contradiction is one of the most common and least discussed blind spots in digital leadership.
Dashboards have their place in digital transformation journeys, but alone, they are not enough to measure sustained growth.
Organisations can believe that they are transformation-ready because dashboards say so. But dashboards do not measure confidence. They measure activity.
A green dashboard can coexist with deep user discomfort. Systems can be live while trust is fragile. Processes can be automated while people quietly avoid them.
From the executive floor, everything appears to be moving. On the ground, momentum has already slowed.
Emotional connection
This is the paradox of digital transformation: the more senior you are, the less failure you directly experience. Dashboards compress reality. They summarise thousands of lived experiences into neat indicators.
While abstraction is necessary, it also creates distance from frustration, from fear, and from the social cost of things not working.
Dashboards must be coupled with fostering an emotional connection with customers. Trust is the bridge that connects digital solutions and consumer confidence to adopt and use them repeatedly.
Leaders experience digital failure as a statistic. Customers and frontline employees experience it as a moment. A failed transaction, a confusing interface, or a slow response may register as a minor deviation on a dashboard.
To a customer, it may signal risk. To an employee, it may signal exposure. These moments shape behaviour far more than performance metrics.
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This is why, in many instances, adoption often stalls after launch. Early usage may be triggered by curiosity, and sustained usage reflects confidence.
Dashboards are excellent at capturing the former, but weak at revealing the latter. This is where a trust infrastructure must be maintained through regular engagement with customers, listening to their voice, and ensuring help is always near.
When adoption slows, are you the leader who often asks for more data, more dashboards, more reports, more analytics?
But the problem is rarely a lack of information. It is lack of proximity to the customer. Customers can forgive an experience friction for some time, but they do not forgive abandonment.
True readiness is not reflected in uptime or transaction volumes alone. It is reflected in confidence under pressure—confidence that systems will work when it matters, and that help will be available when they do not.
Until leaders recognise this blind spot, organisations will continue to invest heavily in digital systems while quietly wondering why change never quite arrives. That is why trust must be treated as an early warning system.
Trust answers questions metrics cannot: do customers feel protected and cared for? In the event of a service friction, will help be readily available?
Do service failures strengthen or weaken customer confidence? It is important to appreciate that trust appears before loyalty, advocacy and long-term usage.
Dr Kiburu is an enthusiast of applied technology for the advancement of society
Follow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp
By Lydia Kiburu