What Makes Digital Leadership Different

Figure 1 Digital Challenges and Digital Leadership

Articulating the value that change will bring and investing accordingly.

Owning the transformation.

Equipping employees to succeed.

Hire digital leaders to get the ball rolling.

Ensure the most senior people lead digital change.

Create an environment where new leaders can step up.

Cultivate a culture of experimentation.

Regularly refresh your senior team’s digital literacy through ongoing continuing education.

There’s never enough digital leadership - 68% of respondents agreed that their organisation needs to find new leaders to succeed in a digital era. However, there are simply not enough digital leaders who can meet the challenge. Digitally maturing companies are doing something to address the problem - see Figure 2 below - with two-thirds of respondents from digitally mature companies stating that they are doing so compared to only 33% of developing-stage companies and 13% of early-stage companies (defined as the company's level of digital maturity).



Source: How Digital Leadership Is(n't) Different here.

The research quoted above will provide the basis for the authors' new book The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation, to be published in April 2019.

From Digital Leaders to Leaders of Change for the Digital Era

As we move from the WHY to the HOW of transformation, there is growing recognition that digital supported transformation is less about technology and more about people, organisation and culture. Technology is just the facilitator. Many current digital transformation programmes will fail because of their over-reliance on the technology aspect and relative neglect of the people aspects.

Digital leadership is no longer enough. Your organisation requires ‘leaders of change for the digital era’.