Characteristics of Digital Culture | DIGITAL CULTURE SERIES
In Part 1 of the Digital Culture Series, we explained what Digital Culture means, how it is different from Digital Mindset, and five key reasons it should matter to organizations and leaders alike.
We have established that building a digital organization is not merely about adopting the technology. It is as much, if not more, about people’s capabilities to manage the technologies, and more importantly, about people’s mindsets and the cumulative organizational culture.
A cultural shift to digital-first can only be accomplished when the workforce adopts certain characteristics. We now dive deeper into understanding the characteristics of a strong digital culture.
Cultural digirati will all agree on the core characteristics of digital culture. They agree that the following characteristics are most important in establishing a truly digital-first culture:
- Customer-centric
- Data-driven
- Risk taking and innovative (Makers and doers)
- Collaborative
- Agile
- Transparent
- Lifelong learning
To determine just how important these characteristics are, eConsultancy undertook research that surveyed 245 respondents from around the world. The illustration below represents the responses:
“If your target audience speaks digital, shouldn’t your organization speak digital too?”
Jerry Allocca, Founder & CEO, Connected Culture
The most aspirational companies in the world today, all of which are part of the Fortune 500 list are also digital companies, with great work cultures. The culture that exists within them embodies most, if not all, the characteristics of a strong digital culture.
Let’s understand what the characteristics of digital culture are:
1. Customer Centricity
“Customer-centric companies live by a set of values that put the customer front and centre, and they reinforce those values through cultural elements, metrics and the right behavior.”
Erik Vermeulen, Global Behavioral Economic Strategist
Customer centricity is the single most important tool to winning in the Digital Age. Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to customer centricity is the lack of a customer-centric culture within the organization. The industrial age taught us to focus on creating a great product or service and the customers would come flocking. That is no longer the case.
Customers are well informed. At the very least, they know what they DON’T want. Organizations need to be almost fanatical in their customer-focus when building their portfolio of products and/or services. To do so, Amazon’s customer centricity policies form the perfect guide.
Amazon has always envisioned being “Earth’s most customer-centric company”. Many would agree that they have achieved this vision, as this is how the world sees Amazon. The company has always been obsessed with championing the customer, and they go to great lengths to make this happen:
- Managers at Amazon would spend two days in the year at the Amazon Call Centre to truly understand the customer perspective
- A ‘get out of the building’ policy is encouraged to understand the jobs of merchants as well as the experience of buying and selling online
- Jeff Bezos infamously drags in an empty chair into meetings, claiming it represents the customer’s seat in the room.
2. Data-driven Design
“What gets measured, gets managed.”
Peter Drucker, Author and Management Consultant
We cannot talk about a data-driven culture without mentioning Google. Analytics is at the core of Google’s operations. From Lazslo Bock’s ‘three-third hiring model’ for recruitment to Google Analytics for marketing and sales, Google has cracked the code for all things data.
In an age where everything is digitized and data is readily available at real-time and large volumes, organizations that place data at the core of their strategy and execution are a cut above the rest. However, organizations trying to figure out their data strategy have one question in mind — how to cut out all the clutter?
The answer is simple. Data does the job of answering questions. However, this is only possible if organizations ask the right questions, because without it, data is just a dump of uselessness. Organizations that have a strong data-driven culture know to ask the right questions.
In formulating questions, it also becomes apparent to organizations where data is available and where intuition becomes important to use. In his book, ‘The Intelligent Company’, author Bernard Marr outlines five steps to success with Evidence-based Management. While the world is taking leaves out of Google’s playbook, Marr claims that Google’s success in evidence-based management is tied closely to the steps illustrated in his book.
