How to lead through digital transformation

Juliet Bauer, senior vice-president and UK managing director, Kry Livi

Bauer has over­seen numer­ous dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, from the intro­duc­tion of dig­i­tal sub­scrip­tions at The Times to the launch of the NHS App. Now at online health­care provider Kry Livi, she is look­ing to scale up the Swedish firm’s busi­ness in the UK.

In every organ­i­sa­tion, the first chal­lenge is estab­lish­ing what you’d like to achieve. The clar­i­ty of that vision can be the biggest dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure. As a dig­i­tal leader, you need to be able to stand up and pas­sion­ate­ly artic­u­late why the organ­i­sa­tion is try­ing to trans­form, so that you can take peo­ple with you.

The chal­lenge at some of the big­ger organ­i­sa­tions I’ve been with has been deal­ing with lega­cy issues. It’s not that every­one doesn’t see the val­ue in trans­form­ing; it’s more that dif­fer­ent parts of an enter­prise will sim­ply be at dif­fer­ent points on that jour­ney. When I worked at The Times, for instance, some peo­ple on the print side of the busi­ness might not have been ful­ly up to speed on some of the dig­i­tal ele­ments, but it became obvi­ous that change was need­ed, as print cir­cu­la­tions were declin­ing and adver­tis­ers were spend­ing more online. The idea that we decid­ed to organ­ise the company’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion around was that good con­tent has val­ue. 

You should be able to explain why you’re under­tak­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in a way that’s sim­ple enough for every­one to under­stand, wher­ev­er they’re work­ing in the organ­i­sa­tion, and in a way that brings that sto­ry to life. That entails tak­ing the time to under­stand your var­i­ous stake­hold­ers and their needs. At Livi, for exam­ple, we have a great under­stand­ing of our patients, clin­i­cians and part­ners, as well as a good over­all grasp of the health­care sys­tem. 

A key prob­lem is that some­times peo­ple don’t set the bar high enough. It’s impor­tant to have high stan­dards in what you do. There’s a real dif­fer­ence between mak­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in a mediocre way and doing it well. When you do it well, your stake­hold­ers will actu­al­ly want to use the new tech­nol­o­gy. 

By con­trast, when com­pa­nies try to dig­i­talise ser­vices for the wrong rea­sons, it becomes irri­tat­ing for users, as they feel forced to do some­thing they didn’t want to do. You have to cre­ate expe­ri­ences that offer more val­ue than before. But there have been cas­es in all indus­tries where dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions have made it hard­er for peo­ple to access a ser­vice. 

Peter Weckesser, chief digital officer, Schneider Electric

In pre­vi­ous roles, Weckess­er over­saw the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the defence and space divi­sion at Air­bus and led the cre­ation of an indus­tri­al inter­net-of-things plat­form for Siemens.

The key to a suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is under­stand­ing that it’s a jour­ney, not a des­ti­na­tion. At Schnei­der Elec­tric, we start with a vision, which is usu­al­ly based on a time hori­zon of between three and five years. Then we work in sprints, so that we deliv­er val­ue for the com­pa­ny and its cus­tomers in rel­a­tive­ly short cycles. 

If you approach a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pure­ly from the tech­ni­cal angle, you’re like­ly to fail. This is not about intro­duc­ing a few more tools. Instead, it should be based on the ques­tion: how can we utilise all these capa­bil­i­ties to improve our effi­cien­cy and gain a com­pet­i­tive edge? Such projects should be approached as a means of trans­form­ing the entire busi­ness. 

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions are there­fore real­ly busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions, which is why they can be so hard to get right. Whether they’re about switch­ing busi­ness mod­els or find­ing new ways to go to mar­ket, busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions always involve change – to which there is usu­al­ly resis­tance. The most suc­cess­ful organ­i­sa­tions are those that embrace change. 

This means that you must be will­ing to impose it to some degree. For exam­ple, when we saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty at Schnei­der Elec­tric to get into ecom­merce, some peo­ple thought it was a stu­pid idea. It’s since become our fastest-grow­ing chan­nel. If you lis­ten to all the scep­ti­cal voic­es, change might nev­er hap­pen.

To over­come iner­tia, an enter­prise requires a vision­ary CEO who’s will­ing to break the sta­tus quo and con­vince the rest of the organ­i­sa­tion to sup­port that process. It’s cru­cial for firms to have both lead­ers who can dri­ve the trans­for­ma­tion and tech­ni­cal­ly skilled pro­fes­sion­als who can put the right IT in place.

I’m con­vinced that any trans­for­ma­tion, dig­i­tal or oth­er­wise, requires a per­ma­nent dis­po­si­tion to lean into the wind – to do things dif­fer­ent­ly from how you’ve done them before. The most impor­tant capa­bil­i­ty in this respect, there­fore, is not tech­ni­cal skill; it’s the will­ing­ness to change.

Siim Sikkut, partner, Digital Nation

From March 2017 to Feb­ru­ary 2022, Sikkut was deputy sec­re­tary-gen­er­al for dig­i­tal devel­op­ment in the gov­ern­ment of Esto­nia – wide­ly seen as an exem­plar of how to dig­i­talise pub­lic ser­vices. Now he is a part­ner at a con­sul­tan­cy that’s help­ing oth­er coun­tries to build dig­i­tal soci­eties. 

We have a decen­tralised gov­ern­ment in Esto­nia, which means that every depart­ment has its own dig­i­tal agency. The ser­vices these were pro­vid­ing for the pub­lic were of vary­ing qual­i­ty when I start­ed my role in the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Our task since then has been to lift all of them to the same lev­el. 

A leader in the pub­lic sec­tor needs to under­stand the basics of tech­nol­o­gy and the upcom­ing trends; be data-lit­er­ate, so that they know what they can get out of this mate­r­i­al; be user-cen­tric; under­stand infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty and risk man­age­ment; and know how to work with a dig­i­tal team.

Slight­ly dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties are required of some­one lead­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor. You need the five fun­da­men­tals I’ve men­tioned, but you must also have good coor­di­nat­ing skills, so that you can get dif­fer­ent parts of gov­ern­ment mov­ing in the same direc­tion. You and your team will nev­er be able to build every­thing on your own, so you must be able to col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers and know how to incen­tivise them. 

You don’t have to be a techie your­self to lead in gov­ern­ment work. I’m not a tech­nol­o­gist, but, as an Eston­ian, I’ve always had an enthu­si­asm for tech­nol­o­gy. I’d like to think that the strength in peo­ple like me is that we can trans­late between the two worlds. We under­stand what tech­nol­o­gy enables and we also know what it takes to use tech­nol­o­gy to change how gov­ern­ment works. 

And chang­ing how we work is fun­da­men­tal­ly what a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is. The tech­nol­o­gy itself is not enough; it must be put to good use. To achieve that, you have to under­stand the tech­nol­o­gy. But, even more, you have to under­stand the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment.

You also have to build places to bring peo­ple togeth­er social­ly. In Esto­nia, that might mean organ­is­ing a nature retreat, where­as some oth­er gov­ern­ments might hold a big par­ty. Such gath­er­ings cre­ate team cohe­sion – it’s a rela­tion­ships game. Recruit­ing the right peo­ple to your team will make a whole lot of dif­fer­ence too.