Are people really the key to digital transformation success?

It’s long been said that peo­ple are the key to suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Giv­en the fail­ure rate of such projects, it’s clear that many com­pa­nies aren’t get­ting the right tal­ent onboard. 

The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of trans­for­ma­tion projects aren’t com­plet­ed on time or with­in bud­get, or sim­ply fail. It’s not hard to see why – far from being a sim­ple upgrade to a company’s oper­at­ing sys­tems, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion involves a com­plete over­haul of an organisation’s ways of work­ing. 

So what kind of peo­ple can make this hap­pen? Pro­fes­sor Christo­pher Tuc­ci, direc­tor of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Busi­ness School’s Cen­tre for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, breaks tal­ent down into peo­ple with dig­i­tal skills and those with lega­cy skills around old­er IT sys­tems, hard­ware and soft­ware. 

“You need peo­ple with dig­i­tal skills, includ­ing senior exec­u­tives with an aware­ness of tech­nol­o­gy and a vision of where dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will take the organ­i­sa­tion,” Tuc­ci says. “But when we talk about peo­ple being the key to suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, I think it’s those with lega­cy skills who we are refer­ring to.”

A question of culture

What does this mean? One of the biggest chal­lenges of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is con­vinc­ing every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion to engage. Unless it’s absolute­ly nec­es­sary, many peo­ple are nat­u­ral­ly resis­tant to change. Some might wor­ry that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will lead to automa­tion, replac­ing their jobs. 

Lega­cy skills are key to bring­ing these peo­ple onboard. Employ­ees with such skills can read­i­ly iden­ti­fy with more famil­iar ways of work­ing, help­ing to sup­port and guide oth­ers through the trans­for­ma­tion.  

“That’s not an easy propo­si­tion, which is why it takes so long for com­pa­nies to imple­ment these things,” says Tuc­ci. “A lot of efforts have been unsuc­cess­ful because com­pa­nies have been too focused on the dig­i­tal skill recruit­ing ele­ment.”

Oth­ers argue that it is cul­ture rather than tal­ent that influ­ences the suc­cess of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. “Organ­i­sa­tions have thrown mon­ey at the sit­u­a­tion by hir­ing ‘the best of the best’, yet the dial on being more intrin­si­cal­ly dig­i­tal­ly or data-dri­ven has­n’t shift­ed,” says Emma Robert­son, chief exec­u­tive at Engine Trans­for­ma­tion.

Robert­son thinks an organ­i­sa­tion’s cul­ture should enable tal­ent to thrive and dri­ve progress for­ward. The com­mit­ment to change, the empow­er­ment to take risks, and the align­ment to a shared goal and pur­pose must emanate from lead­er­ship and through­out the busi­ness. “With­out it, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will fail, regard­less of the cal­i­bre of tal­ent you bring on board,” she says.

For some, the fail­ure rate can be traced back to a sin­gle issue: a lack of gen­uine com­pa­ny-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion. All too often the task of imple­ment­ing change falls to one siloed team or ded­i­cat­ed task force and falls flat as a result. 

Dr Gero Deck­er, co-lead at Sap Busi­ness Process Intel­li­gence and the co-founder of Sig­navio, cites the “Wikipedia effect” as the per­fect illus­tra­tion of why suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must engage every­one with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. In the days of old-school ency­clopae­dias, knowl­edge was curat­ed by a few experts who deter­mined which infor­ma­tion was rel­e­vant or impor­tant. With Wikipedia, every­one can con­tribute and col­lab­o­rate, so knowl­edge shar­ing has explod­ed; it’s no longer lim­it­ed, out­dat­ed, or uni­lat­er­al. 

 “The same prin­ci­ple must be applied to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Involv­ing every­one who can add val­ue means more ideas are gen­er­at­ed and impli­ca­tions are more eas­i­ly spot­ted and under­stood,” Deck­er says.

Skills for success

But even with a cul­ture that sup­ports organ­i­sa­tion­al change and effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion, hav­ing the right peo­ple, with the right skills and attrib­ut­es, in the right roles for any giv­en trans­for­ma­tion project is piv­otal to a suc­cess­ful out­come. And right now, peo­ple with good expe­ri­ence in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can be hard to find.

Accord­ing to Pete Han­lon, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at out­sourced busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions provider Mon­eypen­ny, the best peo­ple to lead a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are those who are com­fort­able with change, oper­ate well in a fast-paced envi­ron­ment and can make quick and prag­mat­ic deci­sions.

“They will have excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills to com­mu­ni­cate with both stake­hold­ers and the wider busi­ness, cou­pled with a holis­tic under­stand­ing of the busi­ness: where it is today and needs to be in the future,” he says. “Most impor­tant­ly, they are resilient, which is crit­i­cal giv­en that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions can take years and there will be many set­backs and evo­lu­tions along the way.”

Expe­ri­ence in sup­port­ing and lead­ing change in more than one envi­ron­ment is essen­tial, as is the abil­i­ty to com­bine knowl­edge of all aspects of dig­i­tal – such as Robot­ic Process Automa­tion, chat­bots and machine learn­ing – with an under­stand­ing of busi­ness process­es and oper­a­tions.

The recruit­ment cri­te­ria also depend on the senior­i­ty of the role. At board lev­el, can­di­dates don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be dig­i­tal natives, but they will need to under­stand the impor­tance of effec­tive data use and the val­ue of empow­er­ing skilled peo­ple to make deci­sions at the coal face of the trans­for­ma­tion­al process­es.

How­ev­er, James Hal­la­han, direc­tor at Hays Tech­nol­o­gy UK & Ire­land, advo­cates recruit­ing can­di­dates based on their atti­tude, poten­tial and will­ing­ness to learn, rather than sim­ply their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, skills and expe­ri­ence. Focus on the essen­tial skills and expe­ri­ences required over those that are mere­ly desir­able. 

“Strik­ing a bal­ance between tech­ni­cal and soft skills will stand poten­tial staff in good stead to adapt to tech­ni­cal change, both now and in the future.”

People power

High-per­form­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion­al­ists also need excep­tion­al peo­ple skills, arguably one of the most impor­tant attrib­ut­es. Much of their job will involve com­mu­ni­cat­ing and engag­ing with oth­er indi­vid­u­als with­in the organ­i­sa­tion, gath­er­ing cru­cial infor­ma­tion on the progress of the trans­for­ma­tion project to make any nec­es­sary changes.

 “Many busi­ness­es are still migrat­ing from lega­cy sys­tems to the cloud, man­ag­ing large-scale change pro­grammes, and oth­ers have an increased need for experts in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and soft­ware devel­op­ers,” says Hal­la­han. “In short, the oppor­tu­ni­ties for IT pro­fes­sion­als have prob­a­bly nev­er been bet­ter and many may be tempt­ed to move, mean­ing com­pe­ti­tion for that tal­ent is high.”

In the cur­rent cli­mate of skill short­ages, organ­i­sa­tions need a com­pelling tal­ent acqui­si­tion strat­e­gy. Clar­i­ty around val­ues and cul­ture is essen­tial, along with an attrac­tive pack­age of ben­e­fits. Pro­fes­sion­als are still moti­vat­ed by salary, but oth­er ele­ments can also be impor­tant, such as greater flex­i­bil­i­ty, remote work­ing, career devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties or a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing trans­for­ma­tion project.

Hir­ing the right peo­ple makes a huge dif­fer­ence to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion suc­cess, but as Robert­son points out, they must have the poten­tial to deliv­er excit­ing change. These include dig­i­tal lead­ers, tech archi­tects and vision­ary data sci­en­tists: peo­ple who can ampli­fy a company’s assets, lever­age the full breadth of skills avail­able to them and mobilise teams through lead­er­ship or sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise.

“Avoid the rock-star CDO and focus on cat­alyt­ic tal­ent and lead­er­ship and a cul­ture of trans­for­ma­tion that oper­ates as an inte­grat­ed hive, rather than a top-down hier­ar­chy.”