The need and opportunity for digitally savvy leaders in times of change

“The pace of change today is slower than it will ever be again.” - Richard Fain, CEO, Royal Caribbean International (i)  

It’s a scary realisation, but technology and the smart insights it brings are changing every aspect of business at pace and the pace is accelerating.

To provide some context to the anticipated impact of technological change on jobs and skills, the World Economic Forum predicts ‘the displacement of seven million jobs (20%), with a similar number of new jobs set to be created in the UK by the mid-2030s’.(ii)

That’s a lot of change and churn. And guess who it falls to, to transition those people and develop their skills?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question, but it brings home the urgent need for digitally savvy leaders. These are leaders with the skills to understand the business impact digital is already having (like how it transforms insight, collaboration, communication, learning and decision making), while also anticipating its likely future impacts.

During the pandemic, technology forever transformed who we work with and how. It normalised some of those digital tools that enable more collaborative and flexible ways of working. Yet what we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg. Accenture, for example, suggest the metaverse ‘puts business on the threshold of a new decade of digital transformation, and at a defining moment for all leaders’.(iii)

The pandemic also widened the digital leadership gap. Recent research from Boston Consulting Group suggests ‘only about 30% of S&P Global 1200 companies (that’s companies listed on the stock market index of global equities from Standard & Poor) are successfully transforming to compete with digital natives’.(iv) The trend suggests that as the tech advances, so too will the gap between digitally savvy leaders and laggards.

And the outlook isn’t promising for laggards. The average lifespan of a S&P 500 company continues to shrink faster than a violet – reducing from circa 60 years in 1965 to 14 years by 2026. (i)

Digitally savvy leaders appreciate that new tech requires new leadership skills: The skills to harness tech to better connect, to build long-standing as much as long-distance relationships, to help others navigate uncertainty as much as spot it. These digitally savvy leaders understand the opportunity isn’t ‘this or that’ but ‘this and that’. They see that digital’s competitive advantage comes from people AND digital; also that in these times of accelerating change the leadership need and opportunity is about having a digital understanding and the human strengths to lead.

Axiom has been helping leaders embrace the tech to truly connect for more than two decades. If you’d like to become more digitally savvy or further develop any of the practical leadership skills needed in these fast-changing times, we’d love to partner with you +44 (0)33 3088 3088 or email [email protected].

i) The Future Leader, by Jacob Morgan, Wiley, 2020, P47.

ii) World Economic Forum article, by John Hawksworth, September 2018, ‘Is artificial intelligence really replacing jobs?’

 iii) Accenture report, Technology Vision 2022, ‘Meet me in the metaverse’.

 iv) BCG article, by Patrick Forth et al, February 2022, ‘The rise of companies building digital capabilities’