The Essence of LEADERSHIP in driving Digital Transformation - Looking Beyond Horizon

Post Summary - In our previous blog, we saw why organizations fail in digital transformation implementation. We also listed the missteps leaders took that led to the failure of attempts.  

That brings us to this time to let growing leaders know how they play a pivotal role in stirring things up again. What steps should they follow to bring about positive changes that can redirect an organization towards success and efficiency? Let us get down to discover more!
 

The success or failure of an organization’s digital transformation ultimately depends on C-level leadership and department and practice area heads. Real transformation happens only when a leadership team adopts the concept of holistic change in how the business operates.

C-Level roles like CTO and CEO that come under governance and operational excellence are highly demanding roles with extensive experience in orchestrating transformations and guiding companies through the digital transformation process.

Even with the emphasis on governance and operational excellence, according to the report published by Foundry, nearly 74% of responding CIOs and LOB firmly in that bracket are maintaining a prominent leadership profile and command a vital role in navigating digital business transformation and spearheading innovation.

It is also accepted by 85% of CIOs that they are more involved in leading digital transformation initiatives compared to their business counterparts.
 

To transform the company’s technologies and culture, a strong governance structure led by a chief transformation officer must engage, empower and evolve to lead their organizations through transformation effectively. Mastering their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help organizations reach profound change. 

Irrespective of the digital tools, techniques, and technologies, successful digital transformation requires leaders who can bring resilience to an organization through leadership practices. 

Businesses can excel at digital leadership and management, regardless of any business of any size or budget. But doing so requires more than just savvy IT leaders. It requires leaders across the business who understand why digital technology is essential and how to leverage it to transform their organization into one that can reach its full potential. 

To transform the tone and the culture of the organization, leaders have to be strategic, visionary, and at the same time collaborative with the existing culture (putting in place and managing the people, processes, and technology to execute the digital vision and strategy)  to guide an organization’s digital transformation to success.

If you’re a leader interested in emphasizing greater efficiency and productivity through digital transformation and enduring adaptation, you or any other C-level leader will find greater success by following these five steps to lead successful digital transformation.
 

5 Steps to Success

1. Reframe the organization structure to support transformation

In the race to digital transformation, leaders often overlook or de-prioritize to focus on human transformation.

Reframing organizational structure is essential to getting the human experience right in alignment with digital transformation.

Reframing organizational structure is one of the important parts of digital transformation. Here the transformation focuses on the mindset of organizational members at the epicenter of transformational change that involves permanently modifying your business' DNA by embracing tech-enabled change and digital-native culture. 

Changing people's "mind" or mindset is not easy because the mindset has been formed long before under the conditions at the time. Reframe demands change in people's thinking & behaving, and the change is possible with leadership style changes.

A leader's role is to empower shared objectives among team members by practicing transparency, establishing communication rhythm of goals, and actively aligning people into every facet of widespread transformation. 

Company leaders should give the state of learning to their people that the goal may morph or change over time as the face of customer needs and technology is ever-changing, and staying adaptable to change is inherent to success.

Without internal shifts, the external implementation of new structures, systems, processes, or technology does not produce their intended returns. With firm leadership and willingness to go down the change little by little, employees who opposed the transformation began to follow the path of transformation.
 

2. Access the right tech capabilities

The right digital tools and technology can provide companies with new value and potential.

Digital transformation isn’t just about being on social media or creating a mobile app. At its core, digital transformation is about using the right technologies and innovative methods to improve operational performance, thereby creating customer value.

Leaders must understand the benefits of this shift and how to leverage the latest technology stack to transform their organization into one that can reach its full potential. Choosing the right technology stack is the secret of focused technical leadership for fast-growing businesses.

Leadership constantly learning is often better equipped with a development team that is blended with the set of coding languages, knowledge of effective technology tools, and involved framework to form diverse web and mobile-based applications.

Furthermore, right-tech capabilities encompass the usage of various programming codes, libraries, patterns, UI/UX components, technical elements, and hardware modules, subsequently creating a stack of numerous technologies.

While a right-tech swiftly helps narrow down the on-hand operations, a correctly designated technology ecosystem is vital for a successful digital transformation.
 

3. Revolve the objectives around Customer Centricity

Leaders who revolve strong business objectives around establishing a truly "digital-native" culture are experiencing an increased customer lifetime value and a more considerable profit margin.

Research by Deloitte and Touche found that - 

Having customer-focused objectives for transformation can help leaders pick the technology to enhance customer experience and genuinely help a company transform.

A customer-centric way of doing business focuses on providing a positive customer experience before and after the sale to drive repeat business, enhance customer loyalty, enrich retention, satisfaction, and advance enterprise development.

Understanding whether your organizational structure has been aligned and intentional about customer-centricity extends beyond digital. To foster customer-centricity in your organization, you must guide teams and businesses to reinvent and enhance strategic digital transformation that involves people first. 

4. Embrace innovation across all the channels

Constantly updating structure and innovation strategy that aligns innovative efforts with the overall business strategy, scale agility keeps businesses ahead of the game and safeguards businesses from failures in digital transformation.

Innovation cuts across functions, and only senior leaders can set an innovation strategy. In doing so, they must recognize that the strategy, like the innovation process, requires continual experimentation and adaptation.

Leaders can power innovation by leveraging data and being agile. They can drive innovation through nurturing internal ecosystems and forging innovation partnerships.

This trend is reflected in EY data - more than 68% of corporates cite forging innovation partnerships as a core priority for the next 12 months.

That’s encouraging, but there is a lag between leaders and people who fall behind in forging innovation partnerships.

Companies who think innovation partnerships will harm their internal cultures are misled. Innovation partners can scale up innovation and bring better change-management processes across in-house communities.

Collaborating with external partners is essential for innovation and efficiency. Fostering a technological partnership with the right external thought leaders can bring wonders to every facet of organization where tailored business & scalable solutions envisage changes.  

5. Inculcate transformative spirit in the team

Teams often fear accepting new technologies or policies because they think the widespread transformation will completely replace them or orient them to a high learning curve. 

So, leaders should show a positive perspective of transformation and how it can enhance their productivity, skillset, and knowledge to grow them as individuals. 

To achieve such a setting, team leaders should invest their time in nurturing the individual technical skills and offer training or guidance to let them understand the worth of the transformation. 

In addition, the team should also visualize the ease and accuracy technology would bring to add value to the service they deliver. It will boost enthusiasm among the employees for the transformation opportunities.

This is why a shared understanding of mission and milestone metrics will be essential to leading a spirited team on a transformative journey. This way, employees can work collaboratively toward executing a common goal and create an environment of trust and cohesion.

While embracing digital change can be a good goal, keeping in mind that every good change takes time to bring a quality change at all levels is a step to making things better. Leaders must give their people time to rejuvenate and rehumanize according to the new normal to make a change effort successful.

True success in transformation requires leaders who can ignite team spirit within the workplace, eliminate the old regional silo mentality and add dynamism to the departments to make them more effective and productive.
 

Conclusion

It is evident that a strong leadership contribution is essential to the holistic change of how the business operates that can lead to the long-term success of the digital transformation.

A transformation effort is not only about implementing the right technologies. A tech strategy and culture should be among the primary for top leaders to maintain organizational viability and effectiveness. Once they do, they must pay close attention to specifying the company's goals and embark on people's journey around them. 

To keep pace with change and create long-term value, you should aim to be a transformative leader, not a laggard. Let people know that you are constantly encouraging change across the organization. If certain people in the organization aren't doing their part to meet new standards and succeed in their initiatives, sit and discuss with them and find solutions together.

If you think there is still a gap in the results you need, empower people who have the knowledge needed to streamline changes as they surface and bring in external talent to augment internal capabilities.

Collaborate with partners like Global Lancers, who can bring innovation with tech-enabled solutions designed to enable digital transformation across your organization. Our team accesses the right tech capabilities to embark on an agile digital transformation. 

We plunge into the in-depth stack of technology pillared according to customers' needs to enhance your business's forthcoming efficiency. So, join hands with us so that we can augment our 100% efforts to make your leadership efforts & transformational initiatives successful.