Elvis seen opening a bank account in Hawaii

As it’s Friday, a slightly more whimsical post. I was amused to see a story floating around the internet yesterday that read like this:

‘Missing’ woman mystery solved

A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland’s Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party. The group was travelling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near a volcanic canyon. Soon, there was word of a missing passenger. The woman, who had changed clothes, didn’t recognise the description of herself and joined in the search. But the search was called off at about 3:00 a.m., when it became clear the missing woman was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself.

I love this story on so many levels: aren’t we all searching for ourselves? Aren’t we all looking for something? Yes, sweet dreams are made of this.

As I mused upon the story, I thought about the elusive search for digital in banks. I think the CEO often says we must do digital and, having given the instruction, thinks it’s done. Then, sometime later, they wonder what happened to doing digital and start to scratch around, trying to find out where it’s going and how it’s getting on, only to find it wasn’t there at all, so they ask everyone to do digital once more. Like the abominable snowman, big foot and yeti, it’s on the loose somewhere in the organisation … just that no one knows where.

I guess they could tag it, chip it, put a GPS on it or find some other way of tracking the progress of the lost digital project but, around 3:00 a.m., they can call off the search as the digital project owner was me.

Yes, the digital project owner is the CEO.

I’m regularly saying how frustrating it is that the C-level delegate digital to a project or function with a budget and timeframe, and think that doing digital is all about a channel within the bank. They don’t get that it is actually the bank. It is changing the whole bank to being digital, not just doing digital as a thing. And the only person who can change the whole bank is the CEO.

So yes, digital is that lost woman in Iceland who, when you eventually call off the search, is you. Yes you. You are the digital owner. All of you. Starting with the CEO.

Ah well, happy weekend. Next Friday, more on the Loch Ness Monster and the results of the search for The Holy Grail.