If you thought technology would solve the issues in your business, you should have checked the strength of your people first. If you want the right digital transformation service efforts, you need to have the right kind of leadership so that your goals moving forward. More than one-fourth of the participants say lack of vision or leadership is the main barrier to the successful implementation of new digital initiatives. Also, almost half of the people attribute it to project management and poor communication.
Irrespective of the fact whether the initiatives you take towards digital transformation are headed by the business sections heads, CXOs, or IT heads, it is important that you have clear priorities, metrics, and responsibilities for accountability and that is crucial towards having your implementation plans running efficiently. Organizations need to consider creating the office of digital transformation that is responsible to ensure that individual initiatives get executed against the long–term vision of the company.
What constitutes a great digital leader?
Visionary – Making your internal business case to enable business transformation isn’t quite easy. Leaders need to possess a strong conviction in their values and vision, at the same time remain agile and flexible in the work approach.
Opportunistic – Some perceive new technology as a risk or even an opportunity. Smart leaders, however, see it as both, walking ahead with their teams while keeping themselves alert of the possible risks.
Communicative – It is not possible that everyone will be onboard with transformations happening digitally. Hence, one would need to keep clear and distinct communication that is consistent. Leaders need to have the ability to understand different perspectives, without losing a focus on their own conviction and vision.
Disciplined – To be able to successfully run a business even at difficult times needs good leadership and strategic skills. It is very easy to lose track of the hype of new technologies, hence a focus and constant revisit of the goals for the leaders is a must to make sure they are on track.
Proactive – Leaders need to constantly look for newer processes, opportunities, and technologies that have the ability to accelerate their efforts at digital transformation.
Supported – No leader has the ability to operate effectively without the help of a good internal and external team that supports. Internal champions of digital transformation can help in the trigger and maintaining the zeal, while external consultants can provide critical decisions that come from an objective perspective.
Businesses need to understand that one of the most difficult aspects of digital transformation solutions is to maintain a corporate culture that holds on to constant learning and experimentation – one where short-term failures and mistakes are expected and also accepted to ultimately pursue value creation and long-term innovation. To bring about this kind of behavioral change, leaders of digital transformation need to embody this energy before they have spread it across the organization.
Approach to Digital Transformation is defined
Innovation isn’t that easy as any and every business initiative needs careful consideration and planning, and the same goes with digital transformation. A major chunk of successful planning works down to realizing the innovation approach of your organization, or how you plan to actually activate the digital transformation.
A portion of this involves assessment of your business’ personal innovation maturity, which actually serves as the standard measure towards execution. A company that has a history of being highly resistant to change may not be comfortable approaching the transformation digitally in the same manner as one can easily manage experimentation. So, before you commit to anything, it’s best to figure out what will work best for you.
The crux of the matter is – every digital transformation for organizations will be different, based on its digital maturity, customer base, business objectives, and culture. Finding the time to identify is the perfect innovation perspective for your business, simultaneously recognizing it could also change in time, is one critical component towards developing the overall strategy in digital transformation.
Digital adoption and business enablement
Maximum hype around digital transformation consulting services could be centered on adopting new technologies plus digital specialties. However, that’s just half of the story. The rest of the story is regarding empowering the employees and customers – in simple words end users so that they could be effectively used.
Getting stakeholder portions and engaging your stakeholders through the entire innovation journey remains mandatory to deliver a solution that would at the end stick around and resonate. This would include eliminating rather common causes for opposition or resistance – like lack of training or digital skills, or having fears about job security- that could stop employees from accepting change.
The 7 C’s that can bring change
Convince
- Making the case that accepts change
- Scope that change initiative
- Supporting win management
Commit
- Setting your desired outcomes and strategic vision
- Indentifying the internal change triggers
- Establishing ownership
Codify
- Conducting a baseline assessment and identifying barriers
- Defining operational, behavioural, people, and process change
- Creating and implementing plan
Convert
- Laying out a strategic vision
- Communicating personal expectations
- Empowering middle managers
Catalyze
- Equipping employees through tools and trainings
- Systematizing reinforcement
- Recognizing and rewarding wins
Cultivate
- Clarifying newer roles and responsibilities
- Developing and training newer skillsets
- Inviting employee feedback
Chart
- Monitoring and reporting progress
- Measuring business and cultural impact
- Creating a cross-functional loop of feedback
Organizations that work on prioritizing the adoption of technology over the risk of change management isolation or disconnecting those very powerful people they try to empower, meaning their employees, must realize that leaders must take employee enablement into consideration while planning digital initiatives. They must also build within sufficient support and time to prepare their people to work in a different manner.
