Digital transformation – every day is a school day
Businesses will not succeed in the digital era without skilled leadership and the right digital talent. Leaders and other employees who do not have the attributes to reimagine their company and work will trail behind those who embrace the opportunities of the digital era.
We know that businesses’ ability to innovate is fundamental to the prosperity of our economy. Therefore it is vital that leaders and teams are confident and competent in the communication and delivery of the digital strategies that will support growth and create new business models for the future.
Digital is fast becoming a prerequisite for businesses to gain a competitive advantage. Beyond new capabilities, a modern digital business also supports endeavours to improve employee and customer experiences.
But true transformation is disruptive; the organisation must change, as much as tools and processes. Agility and speed may be required in the fast-paced market, yet major decisions must be made that impact the foundation of business.
How can businesses thrive through digital transformation? What tools and mindsets should they adopt? And, what does it actually mean to be a leader in a digital world?
MARGINALIA spoke with Tim Hughes, CEO and co-founder of Digital Leadership Associates, and author of ‘Social Selling – Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers’. In this interview, Tim describes the latest digital transformation trends, and points out the challenges and misunderstanding around using social tools for business. He shares advice to leaders at all levels on how to thrive in the digital future we’re building, reminding us that “every day is a school day”.
Gloria Lombardi: What trends do you see around digital transformation, considering your ongoing work with leaders?
Tim Hughes: The implementation of digital requires organisations to change. Quite often, people see digital as being some sort of IT or computer-led project rather than seeing it as a change to the people, the processes,andthe IT systems.
It may seem easy to add in some social tools, perhaps to the lead generation process, but nothing will come of social if you don’t involve, train, and show people how to use the tools, and how to listen, share, and engage across social. Expecting people to just adopt new ways of working just because you provide new tools is folly.
Many leaders still expect digital to be a kind of magic; a few buzz-word incantations and change ‘happens’ at a wave of a wand. We see companies fail when their tactic is to just deploy tools and tell people ‘we’re sharing content now’.
GL: How can leaders bring people along on the digital journey, and avoid those problems?
TH: There are three elements, which are core to any digital transformation programme: thepeople, theprocess, and thetechnology.
Quite often, certainly in the IT world, digital transformation is seen as an excuse to replace old legacy systems: the organisation will replace old tools with something new that probably costs less, and looks better; and it might have more of a ‘Facebook look and feel’ rather than the user interface of an old mainframe system of 30 years ago. And that’s fine. But, in effect, the business is just lifting and shifting – taking one piece of IT out and putting another in, which may not change anything.
Whereas the organisation should be looking at boostingefficienciesand achievingbetter ways of working. Many businesses overlook the ultimate objectives when they approach digital transformation.
Everyone needs a clear understanding of the fundamental differences between the words ‘digital’ and ‘social’. Being digital is not the same as being social. At Digital Leadership Associates, we refer to digital more as thehardware. For example, the cloud, mobile, big data, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, user interfaces, software as a service (SaaS), wearables, etc.
