We will be releasing a short series in the coming weeks of challenges associated with digital business transformation. Chris Towers, Roar Media, has heard from numerous digital business leaders on the challenges they have faced on their transformation journey and will be putting together a series of articles on such. We start here with seemingly one of the biggest transformation barriers; people & culture.
Through our most recent Digital Transformation Conference series it’s apparent that one of the biggest sticking points with those transforming their business capabilities is that of people and culture. It’s clear that many organisations have invested heavily in enterprise technology and the tools for a coherent digital workplace but often neglected the need to bring the workforce up to speed and build a culture of innovation and free thinking. Businesses need to realise, and realise quickly, that in order to make effective use of new investments within digital technologies leaders need to clearly communicate change and educate frontline staff on the merits of adopting such tech.
Many a talking point over the last year is that of agile transformation, love it or loathe it, it’s a hot topic! Like new technology the adoption of agile thinking needs to be rolled out carefully and with much planning and strategy behind it; hiring an agile coach or guru for a week’s training does not suffice and like digital transformation, it’s something that takes time and has no real end point, rather a journey where a certain mindset and culture is slowly adopted and constantly evolves. In summary it’s important to put people first as people are the drivers of a business with the technology coming second as the vehicle to enable such change, don’t be short sighted and think technology investment is finished as soon as it’s in place.
We will be providing a more in depth analysis of the challenges we have heard from business leaders from the likes of Aviva, Reebok, Google, Skyscanner, HSBC, Monzo Bank, The Weather Channel, MailOnline and many more.
If you’d like to get involved in the challenge series please contact Chris Towers.