Leading your team to the digital horizon

Leadership in a digitaL age

BuiLding a Case for digitaL transformation

Leading the team to the Digital Horizon

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Leadership in a digitaL ageBuiLding a Case for Digital transformation

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INTRODUCTIONYou don’t need convincing.

You’ve seen the future for your organisation and it is unquestionably digital. (If you don’t agree, stop reading now; you have bigger challenges than you might think!)

But then the questions start: Who goes on the journey? How do you lead them along? What direction? How fast? What’s the path? Is the journey the same for everyone throughout the business?

Embarking on a Digital Transformation (DT) strategy can seem daunting enough. But when you apply that strategy to large teams, the numerous complexities and variables can make the whole project appear just too exhausting a proposition to even bother taking the first step, let alone all those steps that must inevitably follow if it is to succeed.

You have three options.

1 Give up and hope the various challenges sort themselves out. This is the approach your competitors would LOVE you to

adopt, by the way.

2 Sack everyone and hire a fresh team of digitally savvy practitioners hand-picked to be capable and willing to

implement your strategy. Yeah, that’s really not going to happen.

3 Understand the various objections and difficulties the team will face so that you build the reassurances, answers and means of

overcoming them into your implementation strategy.

Are you ready? Then buckle up and let’s get this show on the road…


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Outside of core digital teams for whom these concepts are part of the job description, most employees lack the necessary skills and understanding to effectively implement and manage new digital programs1. This is despite a growing shift in budgets to develop more powerful and complex digital strategies, platforms and channels.

This disconnect presents a major challenge for the success of those strategies.

The problem is that Digital Transformation is too often visualised from an outside-in perspective. Look at our cool new app! Check out our hip new Social Media Command Centre! Marvel at our online metrics dashboard!

Huge investments in technology and systems might demonstrate your brand’s commitment to digital. However—and here’s the rub—behind all this wonderful technology is a group of mortal, subjective human beings suddenly trying to make sense of it all. While investment in technology continues to grow, little thought is given to investment in the people who will actually determine its success or failure.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

1 Digital Chameleon’s Digital IQ Index

http://www.digitalchameleon.net/digital-iq-index.html


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Buying in the necessary digital skills might seem like an obvious solution, but it is an expensive and uneven one. Digital savvy employees are pricey and transient. No business can afford to re-stock every position even if they wanted to. There’s not enough talent and not enough money to do it, nor would it be advisable even if it was possible. And while you might gain the necessary digital skills, you would lose all of the experience, detailed knowledge of the business, and all of the other skills necessary to the long-term success of your brand.

Digital Transformation is an enhancement to help your team achieve the business goals. It is not a replacement for everything else your team brings to the business.

So your DT strategy MUST be embraced by your existing and future staff if it is to have any chance of success. All employees must share the same vision. Staff who are engaged and invested in the company’s digital future will tend not to resist the changes, instead they will help make the vision a reality2.

Therefore, you need to be brutally honest about the need for cultural change. The staff won’t embrace your DT strategy as a favour to you, or because of a flat directive issued from on high.

There’s an even more fundamental question that DT advocates need to answer: What EXACTLY does digital competency even look like? How much does an individual staff member need to know in order to be considered digitally competent? Organisations that require credentials and very specific training in some ‘mission critical’ areas—such as Finance, IT, Legal and others—barely consider the need for the same degree of understanding and skill in customer-facing staff, especially when it comes to DT.

We’ve talked enough about the problem. Time to look at some solutions…

2 Capgemini Consulting & MIT Center for Digital Business “Being Digital: Engaging the Organization to Accelerate Digital Transformation”

https://www.capgemini-consulting.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/being_digital_engaging_the_organization_to_accelerate_digital_transformation.pdf


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MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCEJob descriptions form the building blocks of any talent recruitment and retention program. If these documents don’t reflect the needs of the organisation, they are useless.

Who authors them? Usually, they are put together by line managers and HR specialists, based on their subjective institutional experience and evolved as necessary to meet the changing needs of the organisations.

But what if the person preparing a job description lacks the up-to-date insight necessary to craft them?

This is EXACTLY the case when it comes to digital competencies and it leads to sub-par outcomes. Hiring managers without the requisite digital experience are flying in the dark when it comes to hiring and retention.

ACTION ITEM: Identify your target needs

Define the digital expertise your staff need if they are to operate at a high enough level of competency.

What areas are most critical? There are probably more than a few, including but not limited to: Online Advertising, Social Media, Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, User Experience, Analytics, Data and more.


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CUT THE CLOTH TO FIT THE WEARER There’s another wrinkle to consider: not every staff member needs to be a digital superstar. Different functions require different skill sets.

A Customer Service Rep might need a firm grounding in social media but may require far less understanding of analytics.

A PR Specialist might need some content marketing nounce, but may never be required to delve into the intricacies of ecommerce behaviours.

A Marketing Manager would probably need a bit of everything.

So the first step is to develop a sustainable DT program aimed at up-skilling staff in the necessary digital areas as defined by their function within the organisation.

ACTION ITEM: Tailor your needs

Analyse and document the digital requirements for each role within your organisation to perform effectively in a DT environment.

Then determine how MUCH they need to know about each particular digital discipline and assess their current knowledge. Once you’ve done this, you have a solid foundation for addressing the human part of the DT equation.

ASSESS & ADDRESS: required vs actual competence by discipline

REqUiRED ACTUAl DigiTAl SkillS gAp: the difference between the required and the actual skill set

OnlinE ADvERTiSing MObilE SEARCH AnAlyTiCS SOCiAl UX COnTEnT


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I OBJECT!There ALWAYS seem to be plenty of reasons for a business not to come to terms with questions of digital competency. Let’s look at some of the most common objections and see why these answers don’t address the big questions.

OBJECTION ONE: “Our partners educate our staff.”

External education can be great, providing inspiration and other perspectives from subject matter experts. However, when digital training isn’t focused on the organisation’s business objectives, much of the training may be an irrelevant waste.

It may be fascinating to hear about the digital strategies of McDonald’s or Pepsi, but if you’re a heavy equipment maker there may be few insights of value to guide the digital thinking of your employees. Plus, you have not have hired your partners to provide training. Why should your PR consultant or your development agency care about the skill levels of your staff?

Even if they are happy to provide staff training, it will most likely be limited to avoid eroding their commercial value to the business. Their focus is on growing your commercial relationship so that you can do more business with them, not on providing an unbiased, objective view on digital disciplines.

“Digital literacy amongst brands, agencies and media is as low (if not lower) than the self-reported concerns highlighted in the

2012 Digital IQ Index”

DIgITal CHameleOn’s 2014 DIgITal IQ InDex


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Case in point: finanCial seCtor

Digital Chameleon supplied digital training services to a well-known Australian financial services company. The business had initially relied on a major media agency to supply staff training as part of their existing contractual relationship.

The brand was happy with this arrangement because it could ‘tick the training box’ by merely providing occasional sessions with agency experts in a variety of digital disciplines. The arrangement seemed to be working, until the same agency responded to a client campaign brief by proposing a major spend on online advertising.

Planning for the campaign was already advancing when an independent external consultant pointed out that the major spend was completely unnecessary. The financial institution ALREADY had a vast untapped audience of qualified leads. All the brand had to do was develop a better strategy to capture and develop the vast numbers of visitors to their own website! The brand quickly switched strategies and the expensive campaign did not proceed.

The agency wasn’t being underhanded or deceptive. They simply have a business model, fee structure and an agenda that relies on persuading brands to commit budgets to media spend. Clearly, their “training” didn’t benefit the client in this case – a commercial partner’s commitment to a particular practice or approach would naturally bias any guidance or training they might supply.

aCtion item: learning audit

Review the previous year and consider the various methods your team currently uses to learn about and gain experience in necessary digital disciplines. Partner training, seminars, courses, conferences, newsletter subscriptions, private experimentation—all count.

Now count the number of staff who were actually exposed to this learning.

Chances are you will find your learning coverage is spotty and wildly inconsistent. The most motivated will have supplemented their learning and are inspired to use their new knowledge, while the least interested may have avoided all except that which is made compulsory. As this haphazard training continues, gaps in skill levels will continue to widen, until the team finds itself running at two or more different speeds.

And that’s when strategies can break.

Experts don’t always make great educators.

Training is a very different skill set. No amount of subject matter expertise can make up for an inability to inspire and motivate learners. Effective educators can translate complex knowledge into digestible learner-friendly content that helps everyone to ‘get it.’


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OBJECTION TWO: “There’s no ROI for l&D Programs”

Most corporate training is compliance-based. It’s written into the job description or the performance assessment or the staff policy so that you have to do it. And that is how businesses have protected themselves from certain HR issues for decades.

If an individual staff member doesn’t perform satisfactorily? Compulsory training. Someone misbehaves or breaches a key policy? Compulsory training. An employee causes a major customer service snafu that makes the papers? Compulsory training—followed by the obligatory press release to let everyone know “we’re handling it”.

The principle is very simple—staff training protects the business from getting sued.

Keeping the lawyers happy is obviously important, but this is a rather negative approach to training. It lumps training in with compliance, focused on controlling or restricting staff while protecting the brand.

Most businesses don’t view consistent staff training as a potential driver of more positive goals like innovation, opportunity and growth.

That’s a mistake. It assumes that positive learning takes place through personal epiphanies and can’t be managed from an organisational standpoint. It is often considered difficult—if not impossible—to develop a consistent and predictable ROI from developing what are often seen as soft skills.

Current approaches to developing

digital skills are brokenCompanies recognise the digital

skills gap and its importance

87% of companies feel digital transformation is a competitive opportunity

77%of companies consider missing digital skills as the key

hurdle to their DT

yet, they are nOT investing in digital skills

Only 46% are investing in developing digital skills

Moreover, existing efforts to develop skills are out of synch

Only 4% of companies align their training efforts with their

digital strategy

no company spends more than 20% of it’s training budget on digital

Source: Capgemini Consulting, The Digital Talent Gap: “Developing Skills for Today’s Digital Organizations”

https://www.capgemini.com/resources/the-digital-talent-gap-developing-skills-for-todays-digital-organizations


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Staff training CAN and SHOULD be strategic, ongoing, consistent and developed to show a clear ROI. Otherwise there is little demonstrable strategic or bottom line value to the organisation.

There needs to be a clear and direct connection between learning objectives and business objectives. If the two aren’t connected, you may as well invest the money on throwing an even bigger Christmas party for your staff this year, because the ROI would be pretty much the same (ie: nada, bar a little goodwill).

When you DO make the connection between staff training and genuine business goals, measurable outcomes become possible.

CASE IN POINT: MEDIA SECTOR

One of Digital Chameleon’s major clients is a global media giant. like many media players, they face a radically changed business landscape. ‘business as usual’ simply isn’t an option.

Together, we jointly developed a customised learning program for the entire team, complete with detailed reporting that assessed and measured individual skill levels both before and after. Other agreed metrics included team activity and actual revenue outcomes.

The program worked. Skill levels rose across the team. Specific digital activities increased, as did client revenue.

However, not all results were consistent. Some groups responded differently to the program. Where managers were committed to the program, their groups emerged with higher levels of engagement and delivered superior results. Meanwhile, managers who were less committed to DT usually resulted in groups that struggled with the program.

When l&D and operational management were both on the same page, there was a clear and positive ROi.

ACTION ITEM: Connect with metrics

list your current business objectives in column A. now list your current learning programs in column b. See if you can connect each of the objectives in Column A to the most relevant programs in Column b. Then list at least one meaningful metric to measure the success or failure of each connection.

you may find that quite a few business objectives are not supported by relevant learning, while some learning programs are not linked to current business objectives Where there is a clear connection, you may not be adequately measuring the effectiveness of your learning programs at driving those objectives.

“There’s a gap, and we have to work relentlessly to close that gap. We’ve looked for a way to describe it, and that’s fitness.

You can’t just work out once.” PePsI exeCuTIve


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OBJECTION THREE: “It‘s too expensive!”

‘Expensive’ is a relative term. Bottled water might seem ridiculously expensive in a city cafe—but when you’re in the middle of the Sahara, any price might seem a bargain.

Is a training program a life-saving resource? Consider the fate of your business—and even your future career—if your digital transformation strategy doesn’t succeed.

as more businesses adopt DT and hire more digital talent, the supply pool is struggling to grow fast enough to meet the demand. Therefore, the costs of hiring in appropriate digital skills are rising fast. Just look at starting salaries being offered for even junior digital talent. And that’s assuming you can find them.

Cost remains one of the biggest challenges facing those digital advocates trying to establish a DT program within their business. Budgets usually don’t factor in the expense of addressing the skills gap and learning needs of the team.

Source: Capgemini Consulting & MIT Center for Digital Business “Being Digital: Engaging the Organization to Accelerate Digital Transformation”

“We are investing in the necessary digital skills”

DigiTAl MASTERS

82%

All OTHERS

40%



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This might seem like a minor issue at first when the priority is to implement the new strategy and technology. But the problem compounds over time, until it threatens the viability of your strategy.

No investment means no change. No change leads to a deteriorating competitive advantage until the business finally throws resources at the problem out of desperation, by which time it may already be too late.

survival can be expensive — but it sure beats the alternative.

CASE IN POINT:

An l&D Manager for a multi-national ad agency reached out to Digital Chameleon to help a major metropolitan office that was struggling to adapt to digital. The team suffered from a severe lack of the skills required to carry out even basic digital campaign activities. As the agency counted many huge brands as clients, a lack of digital skill could be seen as a serious weakness in the competitive agency market.

The manager’s ideal outcome was a one day session to cover the ‘brilliant basics’. However, Digital Chameleon proposed an alternative, using a ‘flipped classroom’ model that we know from experience works well. but the agency manager insisted on the requested one day session, citing a lack of budget.

Digital Chameleon declined the opportunity because the manager’s perceived ‘solution’ to the problem wasn’t sustainable, strategic or capable of solving the problems identified. And the agency still continues to struggle with the same problems. The business was prepared to compromise its competitive advantage and risk losing major clients because it saw a modest investment in the development of its team as ‘too expensive’.

What is a bigger expense to your business—a strategic and measurable learning program or the loss of your competitive advantage, your customers and, eventually, your profitability?

ACTION ITEM: Number crunch

Add up all of the costs associated with recruitment; such as HR staff, job advertising, recruiter costs, training and induction, as well as the opportunity costs associated with an unfilled position.

Depending on the size of your business and your turn-over rate, you may find that for every new hire, the same investment could expose 5-10 times as many existing staff to an immersive DT learning program.


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HAVE YOU NOTICED WHAT’S MISSING?You might be thinking that we’ve overlooked one crucial area: what do the staff themselves want and think?

There is no secret here. Staff WANT DT training. They NEED DT training. And they aren’t usually shy about saying so. What they DON’T want, however, is training that seems irrelevant or that isn’t clearly linked to their every-day performance.

Digital Chameleon has conducted hundreds of DT learning programs. In none of those programs have staff resented, avoided or otherwise denied the need for the program.

They want to remain relevant in their roles just as much as you want your brand to remain so. The team isn’t a hard group to persuade.

However, requests from staff for more training aren’t generally acted upon by management.

Staff surveys might indicate a strong desire for more learning. Yet even though the survey question comes from management, most management teams ignore the answer for many of the reasons we’ve covered.

CASE IN pOINT:

Digital Chameleon has worked with an iconic brand on a highly successful pilot program, according to all of the agreed metrics. Yet, when the L&D manager left the business, the incoming manager cited “other priorities” and the program promptly died.

Of course, this happens in business all the time. But what was even more frustrating was the number of team members, as well internal trainers, who continued to contact Digital Chameleon directly, asking when the program would resume, even years later.

Those who had experienced the program loved it and many others wanted the same experience.

The company continues to push out press releases that boasts of its digital savvy. Unfortunately, the truth from the inside is that the business continues to struggle, deteriorate and shrink. Eventually, no amount of positive PR will matter.


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THERE’S A STORM COMINGDigital is disrupting every sector. What were once considered bedrock brand assets — business models, distribution networks, customer loyalty, leading technology, etc — are being reshaped and revalued in market after market. No brand is immune.

Your staff already knows this, even if your board or management team do not. The staff are on the frontline with your customers. They can see former market advantages eroding away as more nimble competitors and new startups eat up your market share, steal your customers and take the lead away from you.

So as they fight to hold the line, support your team by investing in them. Developing their skills will not only stiffen their resolve, but will also attract new talent, keen for a career with a brand that values its staff.

Brands that ignore their human capital will see their troops desert. Those who remain are probably the least capable and least valuable to the brand’s future success.

Forget short cuts that avoid the main problem. Instead, embrace the hurdles along the way, as each one represents progress and opportunity. Above all, value and invest in your team.

If you do these things, your brand will have a much greater chance of survival as it thrives in the Age of Digital Transformation.

Digital leaders are pro-actively communicating the cultural changes

required in Digital Transformation

82% of respondents in leading companies agreed that their company is promoting the

necessary culture changes for digital transformation

DigiTAl MASTERS

82%

All OTHERS

38%

Source: Capgemini Consulting & MIT Center for Digital Business “Being Digital: Engaging the Organization to Accelerate Digital Transformation”



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what’s next?Bridge your organisation’s digital talent gap.

When planning a DT strategy, don’t forget the people who will need the skills and mindset to implement it.

Not everyone in your business needs to be a digital expert, but everyone will need an understanding of the tools and concepts related to their roles.

Digital Chameleon unlocks digital capabilities in large organisations by establishing digital competence requirements, assessing the Digital IQ of teams, and designing learning programs that

bridge the gaps and align with business objectives. The result is that everyone has the necessary skills to make your DT strategy a success.

contact us today

Patty Keegan, Managing Director [email protected] Mobile +61 (0)411 752 591

4306 / 4 Daydream St, Warriewood NSW 2102, Australia

Ph + 61 2 9997 7002

Unlocking digital capabilities in global organisations

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Leading your team to the digital horizon

Leadership & Management

Transcript of Leading your team to the digital horizon