What it Takes to be a Digital Leader Today
The digital leader of today must be an agile, adept and disruptive purveyor of change.
In the ABCs of today’s C-suite, it can be hard to differentiate between the role of the CIO, CTO, CMO and CDO. There’s been an undeniable spike in the number of CDOs appointed at American companies — with the number of CDO jobs doubling steadily each year — signifying an important shift towards a digitally integrated economic landscape. The fact of the matter is this: no matter what your C-suite role, you’ve got to be two things above all: digital and evolutionary. Since today’s CDO could be tomorrow’s CIO, leaders must implement forward-thinking digital strategies at every rung of the ladder.
Digital leaders — whether digital-focused CIOs or today’s CDOs — must embody the persona of a “transformer in chief.” This leader is adept, agile and ready to transform and disrupt, with a strong background blending both hard and soft skills that will help an organization adapt quickly to an ever-evolving digital world. From a recent McKinsey article, “the CDO is now a ‘transformer in chief,’ charged with coordinating and managing comprehensive changes that address everything from updating how a company works to building out entirely new businesses. And he or she must make progress quickly.”
Top Five Digital Leadership Skills
1. Obsessing Over the Customer — Why is customer experience (CX) and a customer-focused model the top digital leadership skill on our list? Well, according to the Forbes Insights Executive Survey, 89 percent of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. To put it gently: if you don’t meet the customer’s needs, they’ll find an alternative. Plus, as you already know, it always costs more money to acquire new customers than it does to maintain the ones you already have, so quality CX is a solid way to boost your organization’s bottom line.
Another hard-and-fast quality digital leaders possess is recognizing the value of good user experience (UX) when it comes to design. Smart leaders know that in a super fickle “download-and-delete” or “click-and-ditch” mobile environment, there’s simply no room for frustrating or bad design. Prototype1 helps companies by providing in-depth UX testing services and prototyping to ensure that every last design element is conducive for a great overall user experience.
2. Maintaining Mobile Prowess — It should come as no surprise that 80 percent of internet users engage with the web via smartphone, and that younger people — those aged 18 to 24 — rely on their mobile devices for customer support. In fact, according to Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers analyst Mary Meeker, 77 percent of those aged 18 to 24 use mobile devices at least once per month for customer support. Mobile transformation — the act of frequently evolving mobile by updating apps, focusing on the user while designing for mobile and implementing feedback regularly and rapidly — is clutch to becoming a CX powerhouse. No matter your role, if you’re not continually thinking about mobile, you’re not thinking about your whole digital strategy
We often hear that mobile is not a use case for certain users. We find that this is a short- sighted view of a company’s future. If digital is a strategic leader, then it must help push the company into the future, which we all know is mobile.
3. Purveying Digital — The title “Chief Digital Officer,” is redundant: all leaders should be digital, not just the CDO. A strong digital strategy is enmeshed across all departments and roles of a business. Savvy digital leadership means being able to promote and explain digital to a company’s shareholders while putting it at the forefront of every single decision. The transformer in chief is able to introduce and spearhead new digital initiatives on the double while evolving a company and its culture around it. After all, digital is no longer a single aspect of business — it’s everything.
4. Thinking Strategically — In order to become a change agent at the top of any organization, you must possess strategic thinking skills. Today’s best digital thinkers are pros at problem solving; working closely with the CEO, CIO and other leaders; keeping abreast on market analytics and trends and being able to translate these facets into change within an organization. They do this all quickly and smartly, while always making agile alterations when needed. Collaboration, building relationships and having the skills to navigate expansive, complex organizational structures aid in a digital leader’s ability to persuade the right people to make the right changes.
5. Managing Well — One thing all good digital frontrunners have in common is their ability to lead and manage complex organizations. It’s especially important that people in these roles zero-in on change management — the approach to ensuring that all of an organization’s changes are implemented smoothly — in order to keep up with fast transformation. Good managers achieve this by creating a strategy of change that’s accessible at all levels of their organization. It’s often very clear to us when a team is well-managed, because their products are well-built and maintained. Good digital products start at the top with good leadership.
Originally published at prototype1.io on May 31, 2016.
