Skriven av As new technology opens up tremendous opportunities it is vital for leadership of a company to embrace promising enablers to new innovative solutions and even disrupting business models. But remember, digitisation is a means to an end, not the goal in itself. As weird it may sound, you actually need to avoid creating a Digital Strategy.
A Digital Strategy tends to be created and exist for the sake of its own. It may even drive an organisation to try to score points for every initiative that is in any way ”digital” (e.g installing new ERP, CRM, etc) rather than seeking new ways of solving old problems more effectively or reap the benefits from new innovations. In addition, most probably your team will be focusing more on internal efficiency than on external effectiveness and thereby your customer.
Warning signs: Ownership of or trigger to creating the Digital agenda sits with the Board of the company or has been parked with a Chief Digital Officer or entity of the company in charge of dealing with the challenging ”new circumstances”. And of course, the existence of a Digital Strategy.
RULE #1: Embrace digital enablers and pursue opportunities within the context of the overall business strategy process. And yes, if it’s not there already, do it sooner rather than later.
A Digital Strategy also risk missing important links to the opportunities that lie within market insights and customer problems addressed by the overall business. That said, new areas to be explored should not necessarily be pursued the same way nor in the same ”bucket” as traditional endeavors.
Warning signs: Low involvement of new members, partners, suppliers or customers on the team. Decisions taken far from the action and thus the team members doing the work and continuously learning. Relatively few externally oriented tests and experiments.
RULE #2: Adopt and embrace the kind of startup mentality of try-quickly-and-fail-fast and always-learn-from-your-mistakes. And yes, leaders of the organisation will need unlearning and training.
Culture will remain strong, and in the end people most often fall into old habits even though kick-off and team building activities introduces new creative ways of working and collaborating. Not until leaders walk the talk and even work environment have changed with physical evidence that new rules apply you can rest assured that organisational behaviours are changing as well.
Warning signs: Initiative involving a large number of people where the majority team members are not separated from their ordinary assignments.
RULE #3: Consider execution outside of traditional structure and governance, as well as physical workplace.
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