Reinvent your Business through Digital Leadership
To Lead Change and Inspire Actions
In an increasingly digitized world, managing digital transformation has become crucial for any business. This results in disruption to value chains, organizational structures, operational processes and revenue models, and in short, entire businesses. This is the new reality and it raises the question of how, where and who accept this challenge to survive in their businesses, and especially how tech companies continuously adapt and thrive in the digital economy while integrating disruptive innovation in their business.
We at Apium Innovations, supports businesses to find solutions for above raised questions to start the transformation journey. Because it has been realized that digital transformation and constant innovations are definitely not just nice-to-haves anymore. Instead, it has become essential to create new solutions, models, collaborations and also to acquire knowledge and skills to keep pace with the digital revolution. For instance many small-medium sized businesses and even government sectors are looking for digital solutions nowadays. Perhaps this is the biggest gift of the current pandemic, that it provides us with the opportunity to rethink our potential and ensure that we are positioning ourselves toward the future.
”At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… If they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.”
— JOHN CHAMBERS, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, CISCO SYSTEM
So, why is it important to develop digital leadership skills in the era of digitalization?
Digital leadership skills are critical at all levels of the business, to secure the enterprise`s future in rapidly evolving markets. Hence, any individuals and organizations who accelerate digital leadership skills tend to be very successful in business.
Research highlighted by the Harvard Business Review shows, the greatest issues companies face do not come from a lack of superior technology but from top-down structures, an inability to experiment, limited change management capabilities, legacy systems, a risk averse culture, and an inability to work across silos. It is pretty obvious, in order to create and sustain change on this scale, organizations need a new profile of a leader for the digital age.
It is an undeniable fact that organization and its people are the success factors for digital transformation. Having said that, it must be driven by digital leaders who understand and respect traditional processes, structures, and have the power, knowledge and charisma to adapt them for the new digital future of the company. These leaders engage and persuade their people in the change vision,cultivate new ways of thinking and working to support the process. And they deploy strong situational and emotional awareness to anticipate and address business and interpersonal challenges, powered by agile thinking.
However it is not just IT teams that need to be up-skilled to handle upcoming technology innovations, any industry needs to ensure business leaders can understand how emergent technologies are set to disrupt existing business models, and work closely with IT to leverage the benefits these technologies offer to empower employees, customers and supply chain partners and finally enable constant change and innovation to create sustainable future value.This is why we should pay more attention to leadership as it is a driving factor in the success of a business particularly in this age of digital. Hence, it is worth to explore more.
Let’s explore the qualities of digital leadership
Pioneer mindset — Great digital leaders are curious and willing to take risks that are regulated by their capacity to continue to deliver results. They always see beyond the horizon of their limitations and never give up on failures.
Leading through ambiguity — Redefining clarity in uncertainty is the key. They must be able to create an environment that permits each employee to be engaged and focused on making a meaningful contribution, in spite of uncertainty. This involves showing confidence and clarifying the purpose of the organization, its strategic direction and values, and employees’ expectations of their role.
High Emotional Intelligence — Digital leaders cultivate innovation in which people are motivated to do their best to help the organization achieve its objectives while developing a network within and outside the organization.
Digital literacy — Intellectual curiosity is key. Digital leaders are passionate about developing advanced cognitive, creative and social skills while focusing on continuous professional development at all levels of a workforce. A strong digital learning platform can act as the foundation for encouraging an organisation-wide culture of continuous learning that prepares employees for the jobs of tomorrow, while driving organisational innovation today.
Drive results — They are energized by challenges and consistently achieve results, even under tough circumstances. The most successful digital leaders will not only have a clear vision for the future of the company but also be willing to commit the resources and implement the changes needed to make that vision happen.
Adaptability — Digital leaders remain flexible and adaptable, ready to make the quick fire decisions that can keep the company on track with minimal negative impact during the sudden changes in the industry.
Hunt hungry minds — They understand that key technological skills are soft skills rather than hard skills. Digital leaders hire people with high learnability and match their interests to in-demand skills, while understanding that technical competence is temporary, but intellectual curiosity is permanent.
Not a fan of Structure — Preferred asymmetric, unstructured work environments by enabling digital sustainability. Digital leaders are moving away from rigid, hierarchical structures to boundary-less, flexible structures that enable collaboration and co-creation with subject matter experts inside and outside the organization. They encourage more employees to become ‘self-starters’ who assume leadership responsibilities without a formal leader designation.
Great communication skills — Digital leaders are great communicators, they are comfortable with openness, willing to share data and information as business strategies have to be understood at all levels, and goals need to be personalized down to the individual.Also they create an employee experience that is exciting, engaging, and diverse that has become a foundation of a healthy organization.
Nevertheless, any organization can encourage and develop effective digital leadership and create an environment where great digital leaders will thrive by taking new initiatives. It is just a matter of challenging existing mindsets and letting go of traditional structures and levers of power.
To accelerate benefits, leaders need to become comfortable with iterative decision making, capable of flexing to the situation and confident about taking risks.But while understanding the importance and value of digital leadership, work forces and companies must work together to create the right ecosystem for developing a pipeline of future digital lead by encouraging people to cross boundaries and embrace new challenges and knowing how to recognize emerging talent.However, it feels challenging and uncomfortable, yet it means organizations and leaders are on the right path to reach digital sustainability.
“There is no alternative to digital transformation. Visionary companies will carve out new strategic options for themselves — those that don’t adapt, will fail.”
— Jeff Bezos, Amazon
