DigitalTransformationTalk: Making culture the core of your digital transformation

On 4 April, Digital Transformation host Kevin Craine was joined by Sohail Raja, UK Chief Digital Officer, GBIS, Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking SGCIB; Filipa Peleja, Machine Learning & Data Science Team Lead, CoachHub - The Digital Coaching Platform; Danielle Gomes, Chief Information Officer, Johnson & Johnson MedTech LATAM.

 

Views on news

At the heart of any successful digital transformation lies the harmonious interplay between technology and people. However, to maximize the long-term success of digital transformation, organizations need to focus on the human side of change and prioritize the three essential elements of leadership, culture, and employee engagement.

 

Employees need to understand why change is necessary and how they’ll benefit from a new digital business model. 

 

But it’s equally important for the C-suite to demonstrate their commitment to change. To keep up with rapidly changing market conditions, it’s essential to introduce a new culture of agile decision making and ownership. 

 

Organising the workforce into cross-functional squads and sharing knowledge and best practices between them and the leadership can go a long way in changing the legacy corporate culture. Squads are dynamic and if they need more people or a different expertise you can bring it on the team. 

How your DT can enable other organisational transformations

Diversity and inclusion, as well as considering how what someone says can come across to their colleagues can improve communication and the efficiency of teams. D&I initiatives may not be directly linked to DT but can enable it and vice versa.

 

Setting up employee resource groups where people with similar backgrounds and challenges come together can increase staff coherence. Putting the emphasis on skills in recruitment rather than on qualifications will help more people with diverse backgrounds join the organisation.

 

Although the link between digital and other cultural transformation projects is not always obvious, digital technology can provide forums and opportunities where staff can get advice and guidance regarding what to do in situations new to them. Metrics and data analytics can also inform the C-suite about how diverse their people in leadership roles are. 

The pool of digital talent has grown in the past few years. It’s key to establish prior to recruitment what sort of digital talent is instrumental to the business’s successful operation. Universities remain a major source of digital talent. But sometimes it’s easier to find people with the right digital skills in other industries and teach them some knowledge of the industry before they get fully integrated into the workforce. 

 

The panel’s advice

Keep the balance between training and recruiting internal digital talent and bringing new people on board.  
Having well-defined coaching and mentoring can go a long way in training and retaining digital talent.

Use the digital tools that are available such as Python and Jupiter notebook to change the way things are done, as well as for expanding your talent pool. 

If you’re a leader, create new ideas based on employee feedback.