1. Having the Right Leadership
Any kind of digital transformation is impossible unless you have the right leadership at every level of your business. You need a digitally-savvy executive team, and you need digitally-savvy managers and supervisors.
The first step in developing your DX strategy is putting the right leaders in place, from group leaders to managers. While changing leadership will be disruptive, it is critical to your success. Leaders excited about DX will provide you the right foundation to build your new business.
2. Building Capabilities for the Workforce of the Future
While having the right leadership is essential for your successful DX project, your workforce will do real work.
Your job is to make sure your business has the capabilities the digital workforce of the future will need. This means making sure you have the right technical and managerial infrastructure in place.
When manufacturing plants transitioned to automation, they had to build new infrastructure to support robots and create spaces for humans and robots to work together.
As you create a digital transformation inside of your business, you need to build a new digital space for your workforce.
3. Empowering People to Work in New Ways
Lots of CEOs pay lip service to innovation without understanding how to create a culture of innovation. If you want your people to solve problems in creative ways, then you need to empower them to work in new ways.
Change is scary and digital transformation is a massive change for your people. You need to provide training and support to motivate your people to work in new and more creative ways.
This means employees need room to fail. Innovation is impossible if everyone is afraid to try something new and different.
Empowering people to work in new ways has three components:
- Create a culture of innovation where experimentation is rewarded and not punished
- Provide access to digital tools
- Provide training and support to teach people how to work with new tools and with a new mindset
4. Digital Upgrade of Day-to-Day Tools
Imagine you are hiring a contractor to renovate your house into a smart home with the latest technology. If the only tools and supplies they had access to were hammers and plywood, they wouldn’t be able to do the job.
If you want your people to help create the digital transformation inside your business, you need to give their day-to-day tools a digital upgrade.
Your people need to transition to working in a digital environment, and your IT infrastructure needs to be updated to accommodate your new digital tools.
5. Frequent Communication Through Multiple Channels
The familiar image of a CEO is the captain of a ship. But, modern ships are not steered by one person standing behind a wheel. It takes a small army of professionals who are in constant communication with each other.
If you are going to successfully change your business’s direction, you need to communicate frequently with your teams. Your leaders need to regularly touch base with their people.
There are two parts to any communication. A message must be sent, and that message must be received. If the message has not been received, communication hasn’t occurred. You need to ensure that communications are happening via traditional and digital methods so that everyone receives the message.
If you want your DX initiative to be successful, you must reimagine how everyone in the organization does their job. It starts with your leadership team, but it must also include every position in the company. DX is not about making cosmetic changes. It is more like building a chrysalis so that you can change from a caterpillar into a butterfly.
DX is hard work, but it’s essential for your business to thrive.
At Venture Leap, we help SMEs leaders with their digital transformation strategy and execution. Get in touch or book a free session below if you want to know how digital product development and digital transformation go hand in hand.
