Digital Transformation: How DMI and UDT Change the Game
The Digital Maturity Index (DMI) assesses the current readiness for Digital Transformation and provides insights to map your way forward for a successful and sustainable transformation journey. The foundation for the DMI assessment is Unitary Development Theory – a unified framework for understanding how individuals, organizations, and even entire societies evolve, adapt, and recover, by identifying common developmental patterns and challenges across these different scales. It has been proven to be highly relevant for organizational development, change management, and team development[1]
What is UDT?
The Unitary Development Theory (UDT) was introduced in 2023 across two published volumes, showing how it can be used in both Psychological and Organizational Development. Two more volumes are planned, which will explore how UDT applies to economic systems and wider societal structures like families, education, justice systems, and solutions such as rehabilitation, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.
A major principle of UDT is that, if it’s valid for one level of human socio-economic system, it simply had to mean validity for all – and so it proved! This breakthrough brings a deeper understanding of development across many fields. Here’s how UDT stands out compared to traditional Change Management (CM) and Organizational Development (OD) models:
Key Advantages of UDT for Organisation Development and Change Management
1. Proven Validity
Most popular CM/OD models are based only on practitioners’ experience — they aren’t backed by any solid theory or research. This lack of foundation contributes to their high failure rates (70%+). UDT, however, has been validated with strong evidence, shown in Volume 2. It fills in the gaps that past thinkers like Greiner and Kotter saw but couldn’t fully explain due to outdated thinking.
2. Practical Use
UDT is highly usable. It supports everything from formal diagnostics to full-system change. You can use it as a structured process, a modular tool, or even just as a discussion framework. It’s already been used to initiate large-scale culture change, with detailed case studies in Volume 2.
3. Easy to Use
UDT offers clear visuals and step-by-step guides to help people move from their current level of functioning to where they need to be.
4. Covers Both “Hard” and “Soft” Skills
Unlike other tools, UDT can help develop both technical (e.g., finance, tech) and people-focused (e.g., interpersonal, customer service) capabilities — giving it unique power for organization-wide improvement.
5. Academic Credibility
While many traditional CM/OD models are published by non-academic presses, UDT’s work is published and peer-reviewed by Routledge, a leading academic publisher.
6. Addresses Overlooked Developmental Levels
UDT goes further than other models. In psychology, it covers advanced developmental levels that are often ignored. In organizations, it fills the gap at the lower end of performance — the very areas where most systems get stuck. UDT explains why interventions often fail and shows how to fix this using ideas like Habituation and Inversion, which help design change efforts that actually work.
7. Wide Range of Uses in Organizations
UDT works across multiple contexts — from individuals and teams to entire organizations and M&A integration, with tailored tools for each.
8. Traction and Long-Term Success
Most change efforts fail because they either don’t gain traction or don’t last. UDT improves both by offering a clear starting point (a diagnosis of your capacity for change) and using human-friendly methods that align with how people actually develop.
9. A Redefinition of Culture
Culture is usually treated vaguely (e.g., values), but UDT redefines it as the habituated stage of functional maturity. This makes it measurable and usable. Volume 2 shows that different cultures (in organizations or countries) can be ordered along UDT’s hierarchy, revealing why they succeed or fail.
10. Maturity Comes Before Culture
Trying to change culture alone doesn’t work. UDT shows that you must first change the maturity level of the organization. For example, Apple in the 1980s had an innovative culture but lacked solid structure and market adaptation — weaknesses that Microsoft exploited. Sustainable change starts by identifying and shifting maturity, not just culture.
11. Avoiding Unrealistic Change
One big reason change efforts fail is that they expect more than the system can handle. UDT shows where change is possible and where it’s not. For example, lower-level capabilities can’t just “step up” — they need a full Radical Change process, starting from the basics. Upper-level capabilities can progress with smaller, next-step changes.
12. Humanization of Workplaces
Research shows that more humane organizations perform better. However, today’s models often ignore this, pushing workplaces toward authoritarian or exploitative systems. UDT works with human nature, not against it, making it one of the best tools to reverse this trend.
13. True Agility
Companies like Haier show what real agility looks like — being able to evolve and spin off new units without internal resistance. UDT is the only model that explains how to develop this level of agility from wherever an organization is now, rather than just copying others and hoping it works.
14. Leadership Redefined
Most leadership models focus on skills and experience. UDT instead maps leadership as a developmental journey — managing crisis, growth, bureaucracy, innovation, etc. It also introduces the idea of Regenerative Leadership, especially important in today’s volatile world. This model applies from family dynamics to global leadership.
15. Real Resilience
Resilience is often misunderstood. UDT shows it grows alongside agility, step-by-step, along a clear path of maturity. This was proven during a study on pandemic resilience with the University of Groningen.
16. Understanding Human Types
UDT explains that people (and systems) start with different leanings — toward structure and control (e.g., bureaucracy, dominance) or connection and fairness (e.g., socialism, empathy). These often clash in organizations. UDT uniquely explains these conflicts and shows how to grow beyond them.
17. Managing Complexity
One big reason change fails today is increasing complexity — especially in Digital Transformation, where 85% of non-tech companies struggle. UDT helps manage this, and has been praised by Prof. William Joyce (who led major turnarounds at GE and GM) as one of the best tools for navigating modern complexity.
18. Linking Organizational and Economic Development
UDT is also the only framework that connects how organizations grow with how regions and countries develop economically. It brings together ideas from organizational science and economics to support regional planning, organizational clustering, and sustainable development — in a more human-centered way, as many economists now recommend.
Why you should use the Digital Maturity Index (DMI) Assessment
1. Deep, Accurate Diagnosis — Beyond Surface Symptoms
Because DMI is built on UDT’s validated maturational hierarchy, it identifies not just what is happening in an organisation, but why.
You gain insight into the root developmental level of individuals, teams, or systems — allowing for precise targeting of interventions. No more guesswork or symptom-chasing.
Benefit: Clear, confident understanding of true development needs.
2. Full-System Integration — Hard & Soft Capabilities
Unlike traditional assessments that focus on either technical skills or culture/behaviour, DMI evaluates both hard and soft capabilities as part of the same developmental process.
This unified view means strategies can align across Finance, Tech, Leadership, Customer Experience, and more — all under one coherent developmental logic.
Benefit: Enables cross-functional alignment and comprehensive transformation planning.
3. Built-in Change Traction & Sustainability
DMI doesn’t just measure — it connects the diagnosis to actionable pathways for development, grounded in UDT’s insight into traction thresholds and human-congruent growth.
This ensures that interventions aren’t just well-meaning, but timed and tailored to work — avoiding overreach and under-delivery.
Benefit: Maximises impact of change efforts and improves success rates dramatically.
This really could redefine the success of your Digital Transformation journey. I’d love to show you how.
For more information on the DMI assessment, please email me, or set up a time for us to meet in my diary.
[1] Unitary Developmental Theory and Organization Development, Volume 2: A Model of Developmental Learning for Change, Agility and Resilience, Myles Sweeney (2023)