It’s official. Digital transformation isn’t just about adopting technologies to move your business forward. It’s about having the right people in your team to pull it off successfully. According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), you should rely on your current staff to facilitate legit digital transformation.
Investing in the right people for digital transformation both have operational and financial benefits for any business. It increases productivity because of streamlined processes. It lowers operating costs because there are fewer processes to accomplish. Companies that have adopted digital transformation also improved the quality of their products and services have become more innovative, and most importantly, they have gained a competitive edge against other businesses in their industries.
Pinning your hope on your current team to transform your business means defining their skills and putting your trust in their knowledge. By doing so, you are able to identify who to assign to key positions that will foster change. At the same time, you can pick out who has the potential to hold crucial jobs once they undergo professional development. Moreover, you’ll know if you should create new roles for necessary tasks.
According to McKinsey and Company, companies that engaged people in key roles were 1.8 times more likely to succeed in their transformation than those that don’t. If you still don’t have the right people to back up your company’s transformation, you need to put exceptional employees throughout your organization. You should also put digital leaders in essential and critical management positions.
Still clueless about how to leverage your staff for your company’s digital transformation? Let this article help you how to transform your company by putting the right people in key roles across your organization.
Put Digital Leaders in Key Positions
Technologies that fit can transform your business, but it requires the right guidance and mindset. Who formulates your company’s digital transformation strategy, therefore, is one of the first persons or people you should consider to lead the change.
The right leadership can develop an effective strategy for your company’s transformation. In fact, McKinsey has suggested that organizations require specialized leaders such as chief digital officers and chief analytics officers. The HBR, on the other hand, cites four domains that should guide you when choosing the right leaders — organizational change capacity, technology, process, and data. The right leaders will have the right skills to conquer these domains.
A leader’s organizational change capacity shows emotional intelligence, courage, teamwork, and of course, leadership. The right leader must also be able to work closely with your business using technological breadth and depth.
When considering a leader’s process domain, on the other hand, you should look for someone who can determine two difficult transformation areas: when a comprehensive re-engineering approach is needed, and when to improve the incremental process.
Finally, you need a leader who can encourage employees to take new roles as data creators and data customers.
Solicit and Require Commitment from Middle Managers
It’s highly appropriate to have your C-suite, or the executive level managers, committed to your company’s digital transformation objective. However, it’s also important to have middle management committed to that purpose. Otherwise, they can defy and resist your organization’s goals, controlling power bases and holding up functional data silos.
To bring middle managers on board your goal and encourage behavioral change, you must be transparent with your purpose. Often, middle managers are the ones showing defiance because they feel vulnerable to job loss caused by a digital transformation. As you should know, this kind of change requires new digital skills. This means your company will implement new ways of working, bionic processes, automation, upskilling, and retraining. All of these can be threats to a middle manager’s career.
Aside from being transparent about your digital transformation objectives, you should adjust career paths and compensation programs to encourage and motivate managers to be committed.
Change Company Culture
Once committed, middle managers should communicate your company’s digital transformation goals to employees. Part of digital transformation is to encourage a culture of consistent and constant quality improvement and innovation. One way of fostering quality is through asset protection. For example, you should protect your company’s digital assets and software, and working with a software patent attorney can help you achieve this.
Communicating your digital transformation goals must be done in a way that gives voice to employees. They should be allowed to air their concerns, especially if the change will affect their job.
In the same way, having champions in each department or rank can be effective in convincing your people that the transformation is necessary for the company’s growth.
Finally, this change in culture must be maintained. It must be part of daily company culture.
Beyond Technology
Talent is required for an effective digital transformation. In fact, putting together the right team and leaders may be one of the most important objectives you can achieve to successfully implement digital transformation. Knowing this, consider the tips above when establishing the right workforce for your company’s digital transformation.