As businesses endeavor to develop new digital capabilities, they need to make significant changes to their work culture, business strategies, talent management, and internal processes. These changes raise critical questions about what it means to lead an organization undergoing such a thorough transformation. In this blog post, we will examine leadership in a digital environment more specifically in the context of digital transformation.

What Is Digital Leadership

Leadership is the action of leading an organization towards a business goal. It, therefore, exists to achieve a goal. In our case, that goal is digital transformation. Therefore, we can define digital leadership as the deliberate and planned use of a company's digital assets to achieve digital transformation.

The strategic use of digital assets to reap commercial business goals is nothing new. However, when we talk about leading a digital transformation, we need to realize the complexity of the challenge. It requires you to not only lead the organization in a new strategic direction but also to change the way you lead.

Digital leadership involves the use of digital technologies in the management, sustainability, and growth of the organization. It requires you to not only promote digital transformation but also to take accountability for the quality and the functional value of digital assets, as well as to inspire innovation.

Another important aspect of digital leadership is that it is dynamic. It is not a fixed concept but one that requires you to constantly learn new approaches, methods, and tools to be able to lead effectively in an age of continual technology and digital disruption.

What Are The Traits Of A Digital Leader

Now that we have defined digital leadership in the context of digital transformation, let's look at the distinguishing qualities and characteristics of a digital leader.

1. Digital Capabilities

Digital competence is a prerequisite for any organization that aims to survive in this digital age. It is essential for digital leaders to realize that they are the driving force and transformation begins with them. The leader, therefore, has to set an example leading from the front and championing the cause of digital transformation. Given the abundance of technological changes and digital disruptions, the development of digital capabilities needs to be continuous as well as agile.

2. Agility

Agility is arguably the most important characteristic of a digital leader. Agility in digital leadership covers everything from the early adoption of new technologies to the reimagining of the business models. But what does this agility in leadership look like, what does an agile leader do?

Agile leaders proactively work toward digital transformation. They actively expand their knowledge, question the status quo, and take up new challenges. They influence the stakeholders by engaging them in driving digital transformation. Agile digital leaders realize that it is only by improving their own agility that they can bring about agility in their teams, and nudge them towards innovation and risk-taking.

3. Risk-Taking

Digital leaders need to focus on innovation, which requires experimentation and risk-taking. And risks and experiments bring with them inherent uncertainties and fear. Fear of failure is often a big hurdle that digital leaders need to overcome, not just for the team but also for themselves.

Digital transformation often takes the organization into uncharted territory and as a leader, you need to be comfortable with failures because not every project will deliver the expected results. Businesses that will thrive in the digital age will be those whose leaders take risks, fail fast, learn, and move on to better things.

4. Inclusivity

Digital leaders are deliberately inclusive. They function a lot like coaches and less like managers. They possess a deep understanding of their team’s strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, but more importantly of their personalities and aspirations.

Digital leaders encourage their teams to actively participate in the strategizing and decision-making process because they know that the leader’s role is that of a facilitator responsible for building a consensus from the combined knowledge of the team.

This understanding and inclusivity creates an environment of mutual trust in which the team feels encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas, take risks, and to actively take part in the decision-making and problem-solving process without the fear of going wrong.

Digital Leadership and the CIO

The CIO (Chief Information Office) plays a pivotal role in modern-day businesses. Among the many challenges that the CIO has to address, ensuring that their technology is aligned with the business goals and keeping pace with technology are probably the most important. As the top-most digital leader, the CIOs must be the architect of the digital environment of their organizations.

The CIO needs to continuously engage with the leadership matrix to influence the evolution of the organization’s business strategy and ensure that it is pivoted on technology. Business strategies in the new age have a short shelf-life and therefore, must evolve constantly. The inclusivity of the digital leader helps ensure that ideas, information, and strategies are shared and this helps in the re-imagining of the business models. While the agility of the leader and their team ensures continued relevance in the new digital age.

How to lead digital transformation

Here are 4 steps that will help you lead digital transformation:

1. Get all the stakeholders on board

Open communication and transparency are pivotal in convincing the stakeholders to get on board your digital transformation project. So the first thing you need to do is to clearly define the reasoning. Build a business case that clearly communicates answers to the following questions:

• Why the change (digital transformation) is required

• Why it has to be done now

Knowing your team will help to give not just a broad answer to the “why” but also something that relates closely to each of the stakeholders. As you develop answers to the above questions remember to consider both financial as well as emotional reasons to ensure genuine commitment to the cause. Once you get all your stakeholders on board, remember to keep communication lines open and keep them informed.

2. Focus On Talent Development

A leader is only as good as their team. Therefore, you need to focus on building the capabilities for the future. You need to identify the skills required for the transformation and set hiring goals based on the identified skills. In addition, identify skills gaps in the existing team and offer skill-building programs that focus on building cross-functional teams.

You also need to facilitate a new breed of leaders by empowering your team to innovate and adopt new methods. Help them bridge potential gaps between the traditional and the new digital parts of the business by engaging with the stakeholders and technology managers.

3. Keep track of the progress

Although organizations need to see what they’re spending on and how well their digital transformation projects are faring, they often fail to establish metrics and track progress. Clearly defined targets are essential but equally important are key performance indicators (KPIs), which will show how the projects are proceeding.

Defining KPIs for digital transformation projects may pose challenges as the traditional company performance metrics may not work for them. You may need to create company-specific and even project-specific metrics in some cases. In addition, if possible, the use of metrics based on real-time data is highly recommended as it gives you the opportunity to make faster adjustments.

4. Change Management

Change management plays an important role in ensuring the success of the digital transformation. The ability to adapt to change is critical for the sustainability and growth of businesses in the current digital transformation landscape.

At any given time, companies may have to simultaneously deal with changes at multiple fronts- the introduction of new technologies, a shift in consumer behavior, regulations and standards, etc. Such upheavals within an organization can be devastatingly confusing if not managed properly. Introducing too many changes at once, or too often may lead to long term problems. Companies also struggle because often they implement solutions that are unnecessary or unrealistic for their business needs.

Structuring a robust change management plan will help you tide over the changes much easier. Your change management plan should include providing training and resources to help your team adapt to the changes better. Communicating with your team in advance about disruptions due to changes is also helpful as it allows time to plan. However, arguably the most important element for successful change management is fostering a culture that supports changes.

Conclusion

Leading digital transformation in the new digital age is a big challenge because not only do you have to lead the organization in a new strategic direction, but you also have to bring a change in your leadership behavior and work culture. Leading digital transformation requires a thorough understanding of what it actually means for the organization, what skills are required, and what the expected outcome is, among many others.

Your digital transformation endeavors will depend extensively on technology, with the cloud, automation, artificial intelligence playing crucial roles. In order to be successful in achieving and maintaining a technology advantage over your competitors, you will need the support of a trusted IT partner. Get in touch with us today to learn how we can help you with digital transformation.

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