I recently gave a talk about digital business to some country business unit managing directors and other senior executives of a large global group company. Afterwards, the legal officer remarked to me that he had understood the message. He must become a digital legal officer. I was heartened by that. It’s an example of a key moment of recognition. The scale of industry change that digital business brings, is so impactful – that every part of the way a company operates, must change. Everyone around the c-suite table must be engaged and involved. Digital business is not something that can be delegated or assigned to just one or two leaders.
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Recently, Graham Waller and I ran a couple of online Gartner webinars about digital business leadership. As usual for those sessions, we operated several live polls of the online audience, interspersed within the hour of presentation. The session attendees were a broad mix of senior managers, senior professionals and executives from technology and business roles across a wide range of industries and countries. One poll asked about the level of digital business engagement across the c-suite. Here is the result:
About half the audiences for the two sessions voted and we have combined the very similar results. As you can see, only a quarter are in the green segments where all, or most of the executive team is engaged. We think that’s a problem. But you might reasonably ask why should everyone be involved?
Let’s take a quick look at an industry that is undergoing deep digital business change: automotive. Most major car company CEOs are now fully aware that the mid to long term future of their industry involves self-driving vehicles combined with ride sharing services that will revolutionise the way people move. This change is now so deep and advanced that Mark Fields, a CEO who we interviewed for our book – has re-designated the core purpose of Ford to be a mass ‘smart mobility’ company.
In the amazing self-driving smart vehicle future not far ahead of us, ownership and payment models for cars will change, responsibility and legal liability for “driving” will change and intelligent software engineering will be a core competency. So if a car company’s legal people, finance people and automotive engineering people are not deeply and intimately involved in digital change – how can it happen? If you fear self-driving cars, the car company marketers will need to help you overcome your phobia. If the car company desperately needs scarce ‘Google class’ AI software talent, the creative and competitive competency of your HR team becomes essential. This critical involvement proceeds seat by seat around the entire c-suite table. In fact it might only take one absentee or avoider to delay the whole endeavour. And delay could mean real trouble. Which major car company would say it is happy to be 5th or 9th to market? Which car company thinks it could survive this structural transition, if was that late?
Oh dear…, you might be thinking. My company is a long way behind this kind of thinking. Most of my executive team still have little or no idea what will happen to our industry as its products and services become digitally remastered. They certainly don’t understand that they must be personally very involved. Perhaps they still believe the CMO ‘does’ digital. Or that it’s a techy thing the CIO alone can handle. What can you possibly do to fix this sleepy malaise? The answer is to become a true digital business leader – one who leads the other leaders.
To acheive that, you will need to examine your own personal leadership skills very carefully. You will need to amplify certain traits and behaviours in order to move the group forward. That’s what our webinar was about. Graham and I have identified six leadership ‘personas’ for digital business. They come from observing the behaviours of some of the most successful digital business change leaders in major business and government organisations around the world. There are six personas: Adventurer, Ambassador, Clarifier, Educator, Attractor and Cartographer.
You can find out more about the six personas and how they work in our book, which is available in print, e-book and audio book formats. Or you might like to try our new online digital leadership personas self-test, it takes only a few minutes and will help you think about what you could do to up your game.
