What’s Your Digital Culture?

When COVID-19 shuttered American offices last March, it forced my firm to answer a question that cut to the core of our brand promise: What’s our digital culture?

Grant Thornton is built around in-person interactions. We spend a lot of time with our clients understanding their businesses – and with each other, collaborating to solve clients’ problems and meet their needs. In fact, our firm’s purpose statement is, “to make business more personal and build trust into every result.”

So, when the CV-19 lockdown happened, much of what made us special was impractical: We couldn’t walk the halls connecting with colleagues; we couldn’t sit across from clients; and we couldn’t bring our professionals to our clients’ facilities.

In one weekend in mid-March, we saw this competitive differentiator for our firm upended. So, what did we do?

Most notably, we landed on a mantra that helped keep our team focused on how we would use technology to maintain our personal approach to doing business: Simple, Modern, Secure. This helped us make the right decisions when it came to technology and operations, which in turn helped us retain that high-touch spark that makes our brand special.

I had the pleasure of discussing this experience in a recent Bloomberg Breakaway roundtable that included executives from companies as varied as DHL Express US, Gensler and Belvedere Vodka. I encourage you to read Bloomberg’s article about the event or watch the video.

And I encourage you to answer the question: What’s your digital culture?