Never underestimate the importance of people in your
digital transformation effort.
According to a 2020 McKinsey Global Survey of executives,
the ongoing Covid-19 problem has compelled businesses globally to hasten the
use of digital technology by three to four years. Interactions with clients,
the supply chain, and internal operations have undergone the most significant
changes. The proportion of offerings that are digital in nature has undergone the
highest seven-year increase in digitalisation across all business sectors.
Nonetheless, prior studies have indicated that there is a
poor success rate for digital transitions. In a 2018 poll, only 16% of
respondents claimed that their organisations' digital revolutions had improved
performance and given them the tools they needed to sustain changes over the
long term.
There are several reasons why digital transformations fail,
and a lot has been written about these causes elsewhere. But, a lot of these
explanations can be reduced to just one: people. According to our experience as
digital strategy consultants, these transformations frequently fail because
most businesses fail to recognise that people are what make these crucial
initiatives possible, from creating a vision and strategy to spreading them
throughout the organisation and putting them into action.
For the success of any organization's digital
transformation, two categories of people—leaders and employees—will be
discussed in this blog.
Digital transformation involves more than just adopting
technology. It involves transforming organisational culture, business models,
and business processes through the use of technology. It involves imagining new
business models, markets, and more effective ways to draw in, hold the
attention of, and provide value to customers utilising the insights provided by
technology. This is why businesses are more likely to succeed when they
concentrate on placing skilled individuals in leadership roles at the beginning
of their digital transformation programmes.
The ability to motivate staff to work towards the
organization's digital strategy is a quality leader's greatest strength. As
obstacles arise, they can quickly adjust and change course while keeping the
overall goal in mind. A good leader will also make investments in those who can
use technology to further the objectives of the company. They shield
organisations from the expensive trap of "innovation theatre," when
money is spent promoting innovation but little actual progress is made.
simultaneous transformation
It is fairly uncommon for separate departments to work on
their own digital transformations independently and ad hoc before the C-suite
even develops an unified plan for the entire firm due to the nature of the
beast. Function heads demonstrate this by attempting to automate specific procedures
or by using digital tools to mine data to inform their business decisions. But
when the entire organisation decides to go digital and business systems are
unable to communicate with one another because they use various technologies,
having each department do its own thing in terms of digitising might eventually
lead to inefficiencies.
What's worse is that occasionally the organization's overall
digital strategy is determined by the digital technologies that specific
departments currently utilise. That was a costly oversight. What digital
technology your company purchases and employs should be determined by your
organization's future vision and strategy, not the other way around.
Effective leaders will make sure this occurs. They act as
orchestra directors, ensuring that various departments don't play their own
digital tunes in their own silos but instead collaborate to create a single
organisational melody that is in line with the overall plan.
A surplus of cooks?
Having said that, simply installing new leaders with flashy
digital titles won't cut it either because having too many digital leaders
running around a company can cause confusion, a lack of accountability,
annoyance, and inefficiencies that endanger the success of your entire
transformation initiative.
According to a poll of 700 executives, businesses typically
have two or fewer CxO-level digital leaders, with other businesses having as
many as six. One-third of respondents were unsure of who in their organisation
was in charge of the majority of digital and technological tasks. The
uncertainty may be exacerbated by the fact that many functional leaders in any
modern corporation now have digital duties.
Therefore, it is crucial for organisations to explicitly
identify the tasks and responsibilities of each digital leader. It is important
for everyone in the organisation to understand who is in charge of the digital
transformation project.
In a similar vein, consider the following: According to a
2017 McKinsey poll, companies judged to be more productive than those without
direct reporting relationships between digital executives and the CEO.
EMPLOYEES
Our natural tendency is to fight any novel concepts or
projects because it is ingrained in our Biology. Employee support is therefore
essential to the accomplishment of any transformation project, digital or not.
According to research, people in every role tend to be more active overall in
successful digital transformations.
Organizations run the risk of activating what have been
referred to as "innovation antibodies" if they don't involve people
in proposed transformations. Similar to how antibodies help our bodies battle
foreign invaders, an organization's innovation antibodies are activated when
its people see the disruptive demands of the proposed change as a danger to the
status quo and oppose it either consciously or unconsciously.
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