Trust: The Key to Nurturing Your Organisation's Digital Transformation Leadership Capabilities [Part 5/7]

Looking to improve your company's digital transformation capabilities? Our latest seven-part blog series can show you how. Discover how to build trust, commercial outcomes, and integrate Māori and Pasifika worldviews into your change initiatives. Our experts offer insights gained from years of experience in transformation and change. By applying the three-world views of Te Ao Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika, we reveal how trusted leadership is the key to successful digital transformation. Join us in exploring the seven essential areas for growth and discover helpful tips to get started. In this post we explore our fifth observation | te kitenga tuarima.

In our fourth post in this series, we looked at the question; how might we provide clarity of alignment and encourage contribution? Based on our collective experience in digital transformation, we offered four tips that might assist you in your change journey. In this fifth post, we look at what leaders and organisations might do differently to lean into our fifth observation that 'not all people are equipped or interested in digitally transforming.’

This raises our fifth question | pātai tuarima: how might we ensure we get the right people in the right roles and assess the readiness of our people to embrace digital transformation?

We offer four tips we hope might assist you:

• Tip #21: Complete a ‘Digital Skills’ Assessment across your organisation.?We recommend implementing a thorough evaluation process. An evaluation process enables organisations to continually assess peoples' readiness and ongoing capability - particularly in their ability to embrace and/or lead the required digital transformation and people change. An evaluation process allows organisations to determine if the existing leaders are suitable for leading digital transformations and what support might be required. This process involves providing direct and constructive feedback, targeted training, and mentoring programs to help develop leaders' digital competencies and close any skills and capabilities gaps.

• Tip #22: Clarify roles and contributions and establish clear expectations.?We recommend that leaders regularly assess peoples’ understanding of the change required and their perception of the ability to drive and lead the change in their role. Again, a robust evaluation process that includes self-assessments, peer evaluations, and external assessments can help identify people equipped to champion digital initiatives with a profoundly human lens and those who may hinder progress and need assistance to grow. If you do not have a capable change leader, this is an area where funding for the right capability is essential and can deliver positive results.

• Tip #23: Grow understanding of digital and the opportunities it presents for the organisation. Investing in workshops, guest speakers, seminars and mentorship on digital trends and best practices. These initiatives help equip people with the tools and knowledge necessary to navigate the digital revolution. These sessions should enhance peoples’ understanding of the digital landscape, enabling them to make informed decisions and effectively embrace and engage with digital initiatives versus seeing them as a threat. By investing in peoples’ digital education, organisations can increase their preparedness and readiness to embrace the digital transformation and ensure they have the right type of ‘growth-mindset’ people in the right roles.

• Tip #24: Prioritise the learning and development needs of frontline leaders. In many cases, we see development withheld from frontline leaders in favour of those at the top. Research also bears this out as an issue. A recent survey of nearly 3,000 workers by 美国哈佛商学院 found that frontline leaders are motivated to learn, with 49 percent of employees saying they want to advance their skills within the following year. This desire to grow and learn is especially prevalent at the frontline. Nearly 70 percent of frontline leaders expressed interest in developing their leadership skills. Learning opportunities rank in the top five career advancement needs for the population that frontline leaderships supervise—frontline employees—beating out job security, job fulfilment, and flexible schedules. What is clear is that prioritising learning and development for frontline leaders in digital transformation initiatives is essential.

How does this build trust??

Board members and senior executives can foster a culture of excellence and drive positive organisational change by modelling, holding accountable, and recognising the desired behaviours and competencies. To do this well, leaders must ensure they prioritise discussing, evaluating and supporting their people and leaders in building digital transformation and people change capabilities. As always, open and transparent discussions foster trust and collaboration. In addition, workshops, seminars on digital trends and best practice change management demonstrate a commitment by the organisation to the learning and development of their people. This commitment builds trust by giving people the tools and knowledge to succeed. Regularly evaluating leaders' digital competencies from a digital transformation and people change perspective shows a dedication to growth and improvement, instilling trust and creating an environment of opportunity. This approach promotes a professional growth and excellence culture, where leaders feel valued, and their contributions are recognised.

Where to next? | Kei hea a muri ake?

In our sixth blog post in this series, we look at arguably one of an organisation’s most significant risks to digital transformation, that of a company leadership team’s ‘Acceptance’ - tacit or otherwise - of any leadership gap, bad behaviour and lack of alignment.?

As a business leader in Aotearoa, if this post sparks your curiosity and you’d like to know or kōrero over a kāwhe or tii, feel free to reach out to Terri, Jason, Raniera, Lynette or me. We’d love to hear from you.?

Go well, ngā manaakitanga and fa'afetai tele lava ^ Terri Carajannis , Jason Delamore , Raniera Albert , Lynette Reed , and Kerry Topp

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Connect with Kerry, here.

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