Resolving digital tensions in the boardroom

What are the top dig­i­tal pri­or­i­ties for your organ­i­sa­tion? Do you have a fit-for-pur­pose strat­e­gy for nav­i­gat­ing this era of dis­rup­tion and uncer­tain­ty? Where might your busi­ness need to piv­ot its oper­at­ing mod­el or real­lo­cate invest­ment to counter risk and cap­i­talise on oppor­tu­ni­ty? What changes will a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion involve for your role and func­tion, and are you com­fort­able with the sac­ri­fice and com­pro­mise this might require?

Even if you can con­fi­dent­ly answer each of these ques­tions, ask your­self have they been giv­en suf­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion among your total lead­er­ship team? And would the answers from each of this team be con­sis­tent or lack con­gru­ence?

Few, if any, exec­u­tives would dis­pute the pro­found and per­va­sive nature of dig­i­tal on their organ­i­sa­tions, and most lead­er­ship teams may believe they have col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to a strate­gic response to the threat and oppor­tu­ni­ty of dig­i­tal.

Yet for many, the ques­tions of what such a response means, what’s real­ly need­ed to posi­tion the busi­ness for suc­cess and where the real pri­or­i­ties are, can become sources of dis­agree­ment and con­flict.

Steven Zuanel­la, new­ly-appoint­ed group chief dig­i­tal offi­cer (CDO) at RSA Insur­ance and a vet­er­an of sev­er­al com­plex dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion under­tak­ings, reflects on three com­mon sources of ten­sion fac­ing dig­i­tal lead­ers embark­ing on such a jour­ney.

“It’s tak­en me between six months and a year, and some­times fail­ing alto­geth­er, to get con­sen­sus around a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da,” he says. “The rea­son this can some­times be so dif­fi­cult is that first­ly every­body has a dif­fer­ent view of what dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion actu­al­ly means and quite often that view is quite firm­ly held. The sec­ond com­mon source of ten­sion comes when indi­vid­ual board mem­bers sud­den­ly realise that gen­uine dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion might actu­al­ly be a threat, cer­tain­ly to how they do things, if not to what they do.

“Last­ly, is when the CEO is either not clear or not sup­port­ive of get­ting clar­i­ty on the agen­da and leaves it to the indi­vid­ual exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers to get clar­i­ty, which can quick­ly descend into anar­chy.”

So where do you start? Where is con­flict and ten­sion most like­ly, and who among a lead­er­ship team should be most sup­port­ive of a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da?

The nat­ur­al start­ing point in an effort to build exec­u­tive align­ment would seem to be the chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer (CMO) and chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer (CIO). After all, these two lead­er­ship roles are togeth­er respon­si­ble for an organisation’s tech­nol­o­gy agen­da and for its cus­tomer expe­ri­ence agen­da, cen­tral to any dig­i­tal change jour­ney. More­over, these two should have the most prox­im­i­ty to the fast-chang­ing dig­i­tal land­scape, and its impact on cus­tomer behav­iour and expec­ta­tions.

Yet counter-intu­itive­ly, these two roles can also be the source of most ten­sion. Among the lega­cy of board­room pol­i­tics, the CIO and CMO com­mu­ni­ties have both been lead­ing pro­po­nents for tak­ing own­er­ship, or at least, lead­er­ship, of their organisation’s dig­i­tal agen­da. But as organ­i­sa­tions increas­ing­ly face up to the cross-func­tion­al, broad nature of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, func­tion­al lead­er­ship can in fact become lim­it­ing.

Hence the rise of the new pow­er-play­er in the C‑suite, the CDO. Often her­ald­ed as some­thing of a dig­i­tal sav­iour, accom­pa­nied by great expec­ta­tions but also a lim­it­ed or incon­sis­tent under­stand­ing among peers of what’s real­ly need­ed to be suc­cess­ful, the CDO role might actu­al­ly be viewed as some­thing of a poi­soned chal­ice.

An exec­u­tive that chal­lenges the tra­di­tion­al com­mand-and-con­trol men­tal­i­ty which has dom­i­nat­ed func­tions and prof­it and loss for so long. One charged with bring­ing answers to ques­tions which may be ill-defined or not yet realised. And one often car­ry­ing the weight of respon­si­bil­i­ty for some­thing so ubiq­ui­tous and so crit­i­cal that it can­not tru­ly reside on the shoul­ders of one indi­vid­ual.

Once the echo of the chief executive’s man­date has fad­ed into mem­o­ry, how­ev­er, a CDO can find them­selves fac­ing a group of exec­u­tives with wide­ly vary­ing expec­ta­tions and lev­els of sup­port. Too often a com­bi­na­tion of instinct and pres­sure can lead the CDO straight into tack­ling fires or seek­ing out low-hang­ing fruit to build cred­i­bil­i­ty. Instead, to avoid greater pain down the line, it’s cru­cial to invest time up front to spot­light poten­tial con­flicts among exec­u­tives with the­o­ret­i­cal sup­port, and to build con­sen­sus, com­mit­ment and, frankly, con­vic­tion among senior lead­ers.

The one thing about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion that’s cer­tain is that there is a high degree of uncer­tain­ty

“Obvi­ous­ly the CEO’s man­date is crit­i­cal, but the way to make change hap­pen is not through the CEO alone, but through the oth­er board mem­bers, the peo­ple who have exe­cu­tion respon­si­bil­i­ty,” says Mr Zuanel­la. These include the CMO and the CIO as well as the chief finan­cial offi­cer, but also, depend­ing on how the busi­ness is struc­tured, the prof­it and loss own­ers. “And it’s this lat­ter group who have great respon­si­bil­i­ty around dri­ving income and costs, and those are the peo­ple that I try and focus on, pri­mar­i­ly, because they are the ones who show the results,” he adds.

Mr Zuanel­la high­lights two impor­tant ear­ly-day roles for a dig­i­tal leader seek­ing to build con­sen­sus for a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da. “I talk to exec­u­tives indi­vid­u­al­ly to try and under­stand both con­cerns and pri­or­i­ties, and see where we can plug those gaps. And col­lec­tive­ly I try to play more of a facil­i­ta­tor role, to let those dif­fer­ing views come to the sur­face and see where, togeth­er, we can find align­ment.”

Bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Open dia­logue. The impor­tance of rela­tion­ships. These may seem some­what rudi­men­ta­ry con­clu­sions to tack­ling com­pet­ing board­room pri­or­i­ties, but for many organ­i­sa­tions, caught up in chas­ing the art of the pos­si­ble, they can eas­i­ly be over­looked.

Ulti­mate­ly, what­ev­er con­flict­ing ambi­tions or opin­ions exist today, they exist because trans­for­ma­tion, as the term sug­gests, involves change, ambi­gu­i­ty and risk. And the best, or per­haps only, defence is dia­logue. As Mr Zuanel­la con­cludes: “The one thing about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion that’s cer­tain is that there is a high degree of uncer­tain­ty.”