Leading Digital: top-down leadership is essential

Oct 21, 2014

Sogeti Labs

Only 6% of all companies focus on corporate digital transformation. These companies – mostly high tech and media groups – are driven by the convergence of mobility, analytics, social media, cloud computing, and embedded devices. The rest – 94% of the companies in our current economy –is simply not ready for the technology driven 21^st century.

The facts above are taken from the book: “Leading Digital, Turning Technology into Business Transformation”. The book, written by MIT’s Sloan Research Scientist George Westerman, Capgemini Consulting’s Senior Vice-President and Global Practice Leader Didier Bonnet & MIT’s principal research scientist Andrew McAfee gives an overview of the current digital transformation landscape. But it does not end there. Westerman, Bonnet and McAfee provided a 12 step roadmap that must support companies of the ‘old’ economy transform into real digital masters.

The question that makes us all think

Today I would like discuss some of the key questions in this book starting with the most important one: “How can we enable and accelerate digital transformation in a fast changing technology landscape?”

Turning technology into business transformation

Let us first watch Didier Bonnet’s keynote during the Oracle Open World called: ”Leading Digital – Turning Technology into Business Transformation”. In this keynote Bonnet takes us on a journey through the book and presents important findings from his research.

If you only want to have a quick look through of his presentation, please click on the Slideshare below:

Burberry vs. Me…

Maybe your question is: “How can I keep up with digital leaders such as Burberry?” Burberry and other successful companies entered the stage way before our company did. Let me first say that I understand your question. But every technology trend has its own early adopters. So it is normal that these companies are ahead of you. Secondly, when we look at the list of successful digital leaders, we can see that “Leading Digital” is not related to one single industry. Burberry, Caesar’s Entertainment, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Starbucks, all of them are in different industries. The third comment I would like to make is: “You can do it too!” With the right ingredients you can start building towards your position as a “Digital Master”. To position yourself as a “Digital Master” let us first start with determine what you are at this moment.

Digital maturity

When you want to lead digital, you must invest in both digital capability and leadership capability. Looking at the graph we can conclude that, if you have little of both you are a ‘beginner. When you have digital capabilities and no leadership capabilities you are ‘only’ a ‘fashionista’. When you have the leadership capabilities and no digital capabilities you are ‘conservative’. But, when you have both the capabilities of digital & leadership you can be called a digital master.

Top-down leadership is essential

Westerman, Bonnet and McAfee made a 12 step roadmap towards being a digital leader. If you want to reform not only your own business model but your entire business eco-system this is the way to go. So, if you are a part of the 94%, take a deep breath and start this journey. Step by step.

Sources

• Leading Digital Transformation Now – No Matter What Business You’re In – Didier Bonnet at Oracle Open World – Capgemini Group Youtube
• Didier Bonnet: Oracle Open World Presentation on #LeadingDigital – Capgemini Slideshare

Image credits

• Figure 1 – Trade and export me
• Figure 2 – Capgemini Consulting
• Figure 3 – Capgemini Consulting

About the author

Sogeti Labs

SogetiLabs gathers distinguished technology leaders from around the Sogeti world. It is an initiative explaining not how IT works, but what IT means for business.

Comments