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If your digital transformation efforts are not bearing fruit, they might have nothing to do with technology. For all you know, it might have everything to do with a lack of a digital mindset.
Digitalization is as much about how comfortable people are with embracing innovations. Since transformation requires organizations to bring people and technology together, implementing the latest tools will not make you a digital organization. Building a digital mindset across all levels of your organization is the only way to incorporate technology into employee roles and extract value from it.
Why you need a digital mindset
For an organization using legacy systems since its inception, it is natural for the workforce to be comfortable working in a rigid and inflexible environment. If this organization aspires to modernize IT infrastructure and bring in systems that use new-age technologies such as cloud and AI, the transition is not easy.
In the absence of the right digital mindset:
- Leaders, who are not capable of adapting to change, will have a tough time building appropriate digital transformation strategies.
- The IT department will be overworked in evaluating, testing, and implementing new technologies and driving digital growth.
- Employees will struggle to overcome their resistance to change and not align with the changing environment.
Before investing in modern systems and applications, organizations have to drive efforts to build a digital mindset. But at the same time, they also need to understand that being digitally savvy is not the same as having a digital mindset. It’s not just about training employees to use modern technology. It’s about empowering them to build the right set of attitudes and behaviors that makes embracing technological change a cakewalk.
Given that AI, machine learning, cloud, AR, and robotics are big digital forces disrupting the world today, organizations must create and implement a business strategy that accounts for this disruption.
With a strategy:
- Leaders understand the changes in processes and practices that need to be made to keep up with the pace of change.
- The IT department gets clarity on what technologies need to be implemented and enjoys a higher level of tech adoption.
- Employees understand the importance of embracing modern technology and its ability to democratize teams and processes.
How you can build one
To build the right digital mindset, organizations need to have the right practices and approaches in place, so they can empower and engage employees while fueling a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
Here are some ways in which organizations can build a digital mindset:
- Have a digital transformation vision: Leaders looking to enable digitalization across their enterprise must start by curating a digital transformation vision. The vision should focus on identifying new use cases linked to emerging technologies and generating multiple digital revenue streams. This is the only way leaders can build internal strategies to take on the pace of external change.
- Convey the importance of data integration: Data lying in silos is one of the biggest obstacles that come in the way of digital transformation success. Hence, while jumping onto the digital transformation bandwagon, convey the importance of data integration to users across your enterprise. Help them understand how inaccurate, manipulated, and biased data can lead to poor business insights and why investing in and implementing new technology can improve business outcomes.
- Empower employees to experiment: In organizations where employees are used to working with traditional systems and processes, empowering them to be open to change is important. Fostering an environment where they are allowed to experiment with their ideas and systematically capture, analyze, and act upon their learning can go a long way in digital transformation success.
- Simplify the digital landscape: Building a digital mindset doesn’t mean implementing complex tools and systems across the organization in one go. It requires you to take baby steps. Start by simplifying your digital landscape and getting rid of archaic legacy systems that hamper growth and business agility. Work with users to identify areas of business that can greatly benefit from new technology adoption and get their acceptance before moving on with other implementations.
- Understand and cultivate the right skills: Hiring millennials and data scientists alone might not aid in successful digital transformation. Organizations need to also understand the skills required for success in the digital age and cultivate them to generate value in ways that may not have been possible before. Building the right skills and expertise is a great way to turn emerging digital use cases into a profitable digital capability.
- Embrace an open organization culture: Honing a digital mindset also requires organizations to move away from traditional reporting structures and rigid hierarchies that restrict autonomy and innovation. Embracing new organizational models that divest old paradigms is important to relinquish top-down decision-making and control and support new ways of thinking.
Is your organization ready for this transformation?
