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​Accenture’s CEO: 5 rules for rethinking digital transformation during COVID-19, Fortune, Julie Sweet, Accenture CEO (4 min. read)

1. A survey at the end of 2019 found, the top 10% of companies leading digital technology adoption, grow revenue at two times the rate of the bottom 25%
2. Digital leaders are performing better through the crisis and doubling down on their investments to widen the gap

Recommendations (J. Sweet)

• Transition to the cloud – 95% percent of digital leaders have significant cloud capabilities, compared with only 30% of laggards
• Build your digital “A-Team – Recruit the handful who can help you build and become part of your digital core, who are invested in your success
• Be a learner – Learn from your customers, your employees, and the leaders in your own and other industries
• Speed /agility – Consider what internal barriers fell during the crisis and create lean decision-making and governance processes, streamline procurement, and evolve your culture to support a new way of working
• Act with purpose – Clearly articulating purpose upfront is essential to cutting-edge change management techniques that harness the power of employees to drive change and act with agility

Comments

I’d add that digital transformations should be guided by the question of “Does this add value to our customer? Does it remove a pain point or address an unfulfilled need?” It is so easy to become distracted with the new technology solutions. Many will never achieve their projected ROI.

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​The New Leadership Playbook for the Digital Age MIT Sloan Management Review – Jan 2020 issue (35 min. read). Survey of 4394 global leaders over 120 countries with 27 executive interviews.

• Digitalization, competitors, the need for speed and agility, and an increasingly diverse and demanding workforce require more from leaders than what most can offer
  • Only 12% strongly agree that their leaders have the right mindset to lead them forward
  • Less than 10% of respondents strongly agree that their organizations have leaders with the right skills to thrive in the digital economy
• Key reasons leaders aren’t ready 1) Deficient skills & outdated mindsets 2) blind spots – strategic, cultural, human capital, and personal 3) cultural inertia

Recommendations

• Articulate a powerful leadership narrative that courageously lays out what you believe is important for leading in the digital economy
  • Be an authentic role model for the new leadership
  • Promote a culture that identifies future leaders early in their careers
    • Signal which people with which behaviors and mindsets best reflect the values expressed in your leadership narrative.
• Build communities of leaders by empowering employees at all levels
  • Shed the baggage of dense hierarchies
  • Make transparency and trust the cornerstone of your culture to unleash the energy that exists at every level and in every corner of your organization
• Align your talent, leadership, and business strategies
  • Identify the emerging and enduring behaviors that are most critical for your leadership teams
  • Determine the extent to which your leaders embody the four mindsets
    • Producers – obsessed with customers, digitally savvy, excel at executing, decisplined decisions
    • Investors – pursue a higher purpose, operate sustainably, benefit the community, develop continuously
    • Connectors – create trusted partnerships, build relationships, develop networks, create a sense of belonging
    • Explorers – are incurably curious, operate at the edge of chaos, test-try-learn-repeat, seek broad input
  • Hire and promote people who embrace the skills and mindsets you value most
  • Exit those who don’t. Identify and fix the blind spots that might block you from building an effective cadre of nextgen leaders
  • Ensure that your talent and business strategies are closely aligned
• Don’t just embrace inclusion and diversity, demand it.
  • The research is clear that diverse teams perform better, so stop talking about diversity and make it happen
  • Use data and insights to identify where diversity is lost and how to preserve it.
  • Bake diversity metrics into your scorecards. Reward inclusion and diversity champions.
  • Do it by role-modeling your support for diversity and inclusion.

Comments

The report highlights the unspoken. Which is, that those in control, frequently got to where they are through many successful behaviors that no longer work in today’s world. These are eroding leadership behaviors. e.g. asking permission, manages top down, micro-manages, etc.

Enduring leadership behaviors are; creates a clear vision, focuses on performance, is customer-centric, leads by example, ethical, etc.

Emerging leadership behaviors are; is purpose driven, nurtures passion, demonstrates authenticity, shows humility, etc.

I’ll add a couple of power skills which I believe are critical for future leaders. 1) The ability to stay focused and not be distracted. 2) encourages a culture of diverse thought and openness to debate of ideas.

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Best regards,

​Don

​Don K Brown

​don@sc-exec.com​

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