Title: Crossing the Digital Faultline: 10 Rules of Highly Successful Leaders in Digitalization
Author: Sri Manchala
Publisher: ‎ ForbesBooks
ISBN: ‎ 1950863743
Genre: Non-Fiction / Business
Pages: ‎ 344
Reviewed by: David Allen

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Some four decades ago, Fortune Magazine, the trumpet of the financial sector, actually ran a cover story asking, “Does information technology really add value to companies?” Lo and behold, we now find ourselves reading remarkable books like Crossing the Digital Faultline hot off the press, brought into our homes by Kindle and Amazon–and we depend on dozens of other massively successful digital platforms. Author Sri Manchala’s highly readable book, now in its second edition, is at once a history of the evolution toward digitalization and a handbook for riding the digital wave.

The story begins with a 9.1 Richter scale earthquake in Japan, during one of Manchala’s business trips to Tokyo. The analogy to paradigm-changing developments in industry is obvious: corporate stakeholders (including employees) live on a fault line. The fault line is comprised of ‘disruptive technologies.’ Those on one side of the line will flourish; the rest will go down.

Manchala’s eloquent book is evidence-based, drawn from an ambitious study of 5,000 businesses (‘1.8 million data points and growing’) called the Tranz Global Transformation Survey. Companies that succeed utilize analytics, consumer-driven strategies, evidence-based decisions. Only 3% of business leaders are aware of and consciously utilize historically and culturally-relevant blueprints for change. The formula for survival and success in this climate of cataclysmic upheaval involves detailed awareness of market tendencies, appropriation of suitable technologies, dedication to consumer-driven models–in short, a skillful reading of the writing on the wall. This book provides all of this, in the form of anecdote, frank analysis of reliable data, eminently readable tables and charts, and a narrative voice that even readers without M.B.A.s will find intelligible and captivating.

Part I describes the digital fault line, which is a place of crisis–and of opportunity. Part II offers ‘The 10 Rules of Highly Successful Leaders in the Digital Age.’ The rules are expounded in refreshingly pragmatic and accessible language–always fluently set forth. Part III characterizes successful leaders and Part IV is a hands-on guide to applying the 10 rules.

Three additional points deserve mention. One is that the author succeeds roundly in making his argument relevant and timely. He manages to cannily include the impact of the COVID pandemic in his consideration of significant forces impacting the direction of digitalization in the world of business to come. Second, the book supplies numerous examples of late breaking mergers and acquisitions which help explain where we come from and where we are going. (Did you know, for example, that Amazon owned Whole Foods? Were you aware that one of SpaceX’s stated missions is to explore off-Earth mining opportunities?) Third, Crossing the Digital Faultline is neither an apology for high tech nor is it an appeal for the same. It is a frank snapshot of technologies in evolution, technologies we as consumers and business leaders need to embrace in order to participate in a healthier, more rational society–and in order to survive.

Manchala sets out to describe the crisis and opportunity afforded by the new ‘disruptive’ technologies and he succeeds at conveying these. His writing will appeal to general readers as well as to managers and business leaders responsible for proactive business plans and strategies. The writing is clear, direct and not weighted down with ‘techno-speak.’ The book also maps the ever-looming terrain of start-ups, Internet and otherwise. Readers will particularly enjoy the inclusion of a pandemic-informed perspective, and the author’s ability to describe the new consumer–possibly quarantined, definitely more ‘remote’ and reliant on information technology than ever before. This is a highly informative and eminently readable book.

Sri Manchala is a CEO at Tranz, a leading global company in business innovation and design.