LEADING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Everything Leaders Need to Know

Digital transformation is not what most people consider it to be. It is seen as an attempt to integrate emerging technologies into core business processes. They consider it as only related to technology at a superficial level.

However, digital transformation is all about meeting the needs of the new group of customers—the ones we know as digital consumers. While it does involve some amount of adaptation in how organizations approach new technology, it is more linked to how one can alter their business processes.

Most of the organizations these days are configured for the mass market and mass media era. There are some digital elements bolted on the traditional sales funnel that consumers have to move through in their buying journey. Digital transformation, on the other hand, takes a step back and examines the journey of the new digital customers. It takes a look at how consumers interact with the organization in real life and online. All these different touchpoints are looked at by organizations, which helps them adapt to this new flow with necessary changes that are driven by a digital strategy.

Leading a digital transformation requires one to look at what the business is actually trying to accomplish rather than just focusing on how IT operates or technology works. It is important to identify the role digital plays in the strategic initiatives such as collection, monetization and analysis. Digital transformation journeys require accurate assessments, growth, learning and monitoring of the people and culture, innovation, capabilities and capacities as well as the technology. If done right, digital transformation can boost your productivity, spark your growth and increase your profits exponentially. Quality improvement and continual innovation are some of the critical elements for the success of digital transformation.

In this article, we aim to help people who are opting for digital transformations in their organizations. The article sheds light on the important things to do when you are leading digital transformation.

Leadership Capability for Digital Transformation

Are there any particular capabilities that a leader advocating for digital transformation in his organization must have?

Yes, there are some traits that someone leading a digital transformation must have. Here are these capabilities that will make a difference in the outcome of your digital transformation efforts.

1.     A Clear Purpose

First things first, you must have a clear purpose of leading a digital transformation. You should be able to answer “why” you are adding new digital technologies to the business and what they are going to do. you should be clear on the goals and lead your team and business towards them, slowly but surely.

2.     Forward Thinking Opportunist

Successful leaders of digital transformation are known to always search for opportunities and think ahead. They should be able to look beyond today and tomorrow and make strategies that bring them profits in the long run.

3.     Fix the Broken

If there is something broken, you should not only be able to fix it but also take a look at the bigger picture and find out why it happened in the first place. You should be ready to have some tough conversations that lead you to make better decisions and drive your team and organization towards success and collaboration.

4.     Be a Risk-Taker

You need to take a leap of faith when you decide to go all out in your digital transformation efforts. People who lead digital transformation are experimenters and risk-takers. They establish their opportunities and don’t miss a chance when it comes to innovation and experimentation. They are not afraid of failure because they know that it is only after failure that success strikes. However, taking the right risk at the right time is also one of the key capabilities of a leader rooting for digital transformation.

Leading Beyond Edges

When it comes to digital transformation, you cannot just focus on a single department or business unit of your organization. In fact, it is all about leading teams across business units that are not under your final authority to work with to innovate.

Digital transformation has a deep impact on the entire organization. Thus, the leaders of digital transformation need to understand that just focusing all their attention on just one process or area will not make their digital transformation efforts as futile as they wanted them to be. Working across business units and leading them towards a digital change is what one needs to do.

This makes the job of a leader of digital transformation even more elaborate, comprehensive and difficult. Working with a team across business units means understanding their specific needs and then planning your digital transformation efforts in a way that the entire organization benefits from it, not just a small department or business unit.

You will not be able to do all this unless you have built a trusted relationship with all the departments and collaborate with all of them. Being on the same page is very important to reach your digital transformation goals.

Building a Deep Relationship

Working across different departments when leading a digital transformation at your organization requires you to build trusting relationships all across the organization. But the main question is, how are you going to do it?

First things first, you need to get all the people on the same page. Remember, not many people are aware of the urgent need for digital transformation. Thus, as a leader, it is your responsibility to make them understand the need and importance of it. But, just this would not do the task. You need to objectively tell them about the positive effects that the company will have with digital transformation. Talk to them in monetary terms, and in terms of quality and quantity, whatever is best. You need to tell people from different departments about the benefits they can expect if the process of digital transformation is completed and implemented as planned.

When you have the trust of the people from all business units, it will become easier for the organization to implement the new processes. As a leader of digital transformation, it is your responsibility to have everyone on the same page. If someone disagrees with your idea, you need to listen to them to see if it really makes sense. You will be surprised to get so many new and different ideas that you actually might be able to include them in your digital transformation efforts.

If a leader wants to start the journey of digital transformation in their company, they need to be proactive about the specific needs and expected results. As a leader, you should be able to build awareness about the need for digital transformation in the company and educate and engage leaders on the impact that digital transformation will have on the business. It is also important to teach them about the opportunities and potential threats and how digital transformation can improve the existing projects.

The key is building deep trust relationships between all the business units and all the players of this process.

Forming and Leading a Virtual Team

You are leading a digital transformation. Digital is beyond any physical boundaries. This means that you will not only be leading virtual teams, but you will also be forming them.

The beauty of digital is that you don’t have to be in the same place as the organization or all its business units if you are trying to induce digital transformation in an organization. All it takes is creating virtual teams and communicating with them as and when needed. There are three key elements of leading a virtual team.

1.     Start by Building Trust

In virtual teams, you have to trust people’s intent without the advantage of physical presence. Also, it is better that the members of the virtual teams meet live at the start. This helps them nurture and grow together. If you wish to build trust, you also need to be trustworthy. Be there for your team, listen to their concerns and find a solution as soon as possible.

2.     Set the Tone

You are the leader. You need to set the tone to prevail in your virtual teams. If you want the teams to take ownership of their tasks, convey it to them from the get-go. Give them feedback on their work and address their concerns. Lead them from the front, but make sure that they all work on the terms that are beneficial for all the teams and for the entire digital transformation process.

3.     Make Connecting Easy

You cannot achieve the richness of face-to-face communication when you are dealing with a virtual team. Meeting face-to-face is usually not possible when you are working with virtual teams with members. Thanks to the modern virtual communication tools, there are plenty of other ways that can help you improve connectivity and communication among your team members. Virtual communication tools such as Slack, Skype, MS Team, WebEx, etc., have made communication between virtual teams seamless, quick, easy and effective. Even the people sitting and working from different continents can connect and communicate with one another through these virtual communication tools. Meeting face to face is not even a requirement anymore if you provide your team with these effective communication tools that makes collaboration and communication between virtual teams easy and effective.

Collaboration and Co-Creation

When it comes to the success of digital transformation, one thing is extremely important—collaboration and co-creation. Digital transformation cannot be done in a vacuum. We cannot stress this enough— you need to get everyone on the same page. Digital transformation is going to affect the entire organization and all the people and tasks that will be affected by it need to be taken into confidence. Once everyone is on the same page, you need to ask them to collaborate and co-create.

Digital co-creation and collaboration happens when different perspectives are brought together with various digital technologies to create transformation outcomes. Digital disruption is on the rise, and you need to make sure that what you choose for your organization actually helps in achieving the digital transformation objectives and goals that you and the top-management have set for the organization.

Just one person cannot achieve digital transformation in the organization. Even if you are the leader, you need to make teams and designate work to the appropriate specialists. Different teams need to collaborate with each other on different tasks as one thing is linked to the other. The earlier you and your teams understand this, the better will be the results.

For some people, digital is all about technology. For others, it is a new, better and transformational way to connect and engage with customers. There are also some leaders who consider digital transformation to represent an entirely new way of doing business. While none of these definitions are incorrect, there is a diverse perspective of digital that changes from leadership to leadership and from person to person.

Such diverse perspectives on what digital is often reflect a lack of common vision and alignment in the minds of leaders about what a business needs to do and where it needs to go. It often leads to misguided efforts and piecemeal initiatives that lead to sluggish performance, missed opportunities and false starts, all of which tend to affect the health and growth of your business.

Collaboration and co-creation is the first step on the road to creating value. Collaboration with others on new technology can help improve your business’s bottom line and enhance your digital transformation outcomes.

Test & Learn Dynamically

Once the senior management in the company understands the need for digital transformation, leaders should have a clearly defined starting point. You need to understand where the company stands in terms of digital technologies, competencies and processes. Identify the areas where digital transformation is needed and then proceed accordingly. Don’t start with everything at once. Take it one step at a time and check the results before proceeding any further.

Following the lean startup methodology is very important in digital transformation. The core component of lead methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

1.  Figure out the problem that needs to be addressed.

2.  Develop a minimum viable product (MVP) to begin the learning process as soon as possible. Once the MVP is developed, you can then start with the next step.

3.   Measure, learn and include all the actionable metrics that help demonstrate the cause and effect question.

Launching MVP speeds up the process of digital transformation as you have something material to work at and improve on from here.

Measurement and analytics are also a very important part of any digital transformation process. Prioritize your goals and organize your KPIs that you will use to measure performance. This will help you find out if the processes are actually working as per expectations or not. A/B testing doesn’t necessarily have to be an expensive and complex process. Make sure you conduct ample testing before you are satisfied that the process is ready to move forward.

Once you think you are ready to show something to the top-management, test it first. If everything goes well, great. Otherwise, learn from the issues and mistakes and find out the cause. Fix it and test and learn. The cycle goes on until you are able to find the perfect solution that is also easy to implement.

Leaders of digital transformation should set their focus on enhancing the experience of their customers and streamline the internal operations. The focus of digital transformation should not be on the technology, but on the customers and the overall business. Take into account your existing culture and competencies and then move ahead and introduce digital transformation in your organization.

Your digital transformation strategy should be built around a combination of strategic assets that may be relevant in the near future. Your strategy should not be incremental but transformative. Once the vision and strategy are set, it should be shared with all the important players in the organization, from the top management to the frontline workers.

Final Thoughts

Companies cannot survive today unless they have embraced digital transformation. In fact, digital transformation has hit almost every industry. However, one might notice a lack of urgency in many organizations when it comes to digital transformation because of the failure of the leadership to identify the need and work on it. As a leader, it is important to create a sense of urgency related to digital transformation and create appropriate momentum around digital transformation to achieve organizational goals.

Just as digital transformation constantly changes, so does its constituent elements. Most of the digital transformation activities today involve innovative use of available data. It includes, but is not limited to, analytics, machine learning, new devices, IoT, etc. In fact, digital transformation has evolved into more of a data-led change centric medium for businesses, which is working for them currently. This may change into something different as we continue to get more elaborate and effective technologies in the future.

Digital transformation can only be successful if the entire top management is wholeheartedly and actively engaged in the process. It is not just the middle management and the frontline members that need to take ownership of digital transformation; in fact, the entire company and management should understand and agree with one another when it comes to digital transformation.  

As the leader of digital transformation, one needs to have a clear goal in mind about how you are going to achieve different goals on your digital transformation journey. With this simple guide, we hope that you will be able to take away some important things and make use of them if you are given the task of leading the digital transformation in an organization.

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