Leading Digital Transformation

There’s an urgent need for companies to shift their focus from developing individuals to enabling networks and relationships between employees, and authentic transformation leaders know how important this is to orchestrate better business performance. In this episode, Jon Ingham, author of the book “The Social Organization” elaborates on some of the strategic, innovative approaches to people management and organisation effectiveness that leaders can consider.

These days, leaders face contradictory challenges. They could be under pressure to make incremental improvements, while at the same time invent radically new business models. This results in ongoing tensions between succeeding for today while transforming for tomorrow. Wendy Smith has spent considerable time exploring how adopting a both/and approach to these kinds of tensions enables individuals and organisations to achieve results that are more creative, generative, and sustainable.

Healthcare is something we all depend upon in the most personal and intimate of ways, and how this industry evolves as a result of digital transformation will impact many of us. Heather Hancock has 20 years of experience in this space and she believes that technology has three purposes of value in it. These are to improve the patient experience, improve population health and reduce the per capital cost of healthcare.

These days, large, successful organisations are experiencing flat growth, acquisition, and in some cases, bankruptcy. What they’ve done in the past to make bring them success no longer works as it did. And doing more of the same won't bring them to where they need to be to remain in business for the next 5, 10, 20 years. Australian transformation leader Heidi Beets explains how companies of the future are designed, and don't happen by accident.

The successful orchestration of business transformation requires a collaborative operating model between business, technology, and data teams. Void of the digital sugar coating and delusion of transformation that is leading so many established companies to an early grave. Isaac Sacolick - author of Amazon bestseller ‘Driving Digital’ - elaborates on why agile practices are at the heart of executing transformation and he shares examples of what he refers to as ‘bottoms-up transformation’.

The view of transformation and change can often be one-sided as it takes on the language of the originator and doesn't translate well to those who don't understand that language. This means that a breakdown in communication can happen very quickly. Andrew Ward elaborates on ‘The Layers of Change’, which is a way to model a change so we can all understand it, whether you're from a UX, CX, architectural or business discipline.

Disruption is an opportunity for those with the right mindset but a threat to the rest. With recent advances in technology, the possibilities to innovate and disrupt are greater than ever, regardless of size. Daniel Burrus, author of the book ‘The Anticipatory Organization’ explains how he believes we can anticipate disruption before it happens, and turn it into opportunity and advantage.

An increasing number of leaders know that to accelerate digital transformation their organisations should learn to flex their empathic muscle, while at the same time encode empathy in Artificial Intelligence. Following the launch of his latest book “Heartificial Empathy” Award winning author Minter Dial elaborates on the role empathy plays in digital transformation, its importance for business executives, and how organisations can weave empathy into their fabric.

A continuous stream of well-established companies is in decline and going out of business because despite their past success, they’ve not been able to either defend or orchestrate disruptive transformation in a way that allows them to thrive in the new digital economy. In this episode, Charlene Li–author of five books and Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter–talks about her belief that more companies need to stop talking about disruption and start doing it. And she’ll share some ways to get started with that.

The threat of disruption from smaller, more digitally savvy firms has motivated big corporates to launch efforts to build disruptors of their own. A few have succeeded, while many are wondering how to convert new ideas into new revenue. Andy Binns - an Executive Fellow at the Center for the Future of Organization, at Drucker School of Management - explains that most firms over emphasize ideation at the expense of two other innovation disciplines. He also elaborates on what they can do to correct that and accelerate the odds of success.

There’s never been a need for organisational change management and a focus on the people side of change more than today, but a lot of organisations still struggle with it. Karen Ferris is the author of several books about Organisational Change Management and she helps organisations thrive in the face of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous change, providing new tools and approaches for a new age in organisational change management. Effectively, breaking the mould!

Most organisations today don't need to be convinced of the need to transform, but they do struggle with how to do it. The harsh reality is that despite the best of intentions, and billions spent in pursuit of successful transformation outcomes, the vast majority of programmes fizzle out, falling well short of what was hoped for. In this episode, Professor Michael Wade – author of the books ‘Orchestrating Transformation’ and ‘Digital Vortex’ unpacks the transformation challenge with a particular focus on responding to digital opportunities and threats.

A lot of organisations embark on transformation without understanding why, along with the market dynamics they need to address which their current structures and processes can’t contend with. Haydn Shaughnessy, author of the book Shift - A Leader's Guide to the Platform Economy - explains how new market dynamics - ecosystems - force us to find new ways to work.

Changing business outcomes requires people processes to change. The problem for many organisations is that they think new technology will do that, which is one reason why change and transformation initiatives have been failing for decades. Max Blumberg - a visiting Professor at Leeds University Business School - explains why you’d better get input from people on what changes would be acceptable and what changes would be best. Otherwise no one will use the changed process, for which you might have paid a consulting firm a small fortune to conjure up!

Digital transformation in large and complex organisations continues to challenge even the best traditional managers and leaders – often because they still rely on old ways of thinking and working. Roland Deiser is a Drucker Senior Fellow and, in this episode, he touches on three distinct arenas in which digital transformation happens, along with the ambidexterity challenge and agile architectures. Roland also explains why boundaries and boundary management are so important for leaders who have aspirations to orchestrate successful transformation.

Most organisations fail at innovation because they fail at change. They aspire to innovate but often struggle and continue to lose pace along the fast-moving business landscape. Two-time author Braden Kelley is a Director of Innovation and Human-Centered Problem-Solving at Oracle and he shares some ways organisations can get better at innovation, change, and transformation.

Throughout history, great leaders have worked hard to create change, but not all have succeeded. In recent years–often labelled as digital transformation–that aspiration has spread like wildfire across the corporate landscape. Greg Satell has explored the parallels between revolutionaries, corporate turnaround artists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and social visionaries, to discover that by harnessing the principles of successful social and political movements, business leaders can be more successful at driving digital transformation forward.

Demand for skills and talent looks different now to how it did five years ago, particularly in relation to digital transformation. This means that the challenges and opportunities HR professionals are faced with have shifted. Talent acquisition strategist Matt Alder shares his insights on the fascinating topic of recruiting innovation and the new talent acquisition strategies organisations need to consider.

Agility has become an aspiration for many organisations, but it's not always easy to achieve. Peter Abraham and Neil Perkin wrote a book 'Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation' in which they describe how the components of Velocity, Focus and Flexibility combine to form the basis of a formula that can help leaders achieve business agility - and move quickly to a position of advantage.

At the intersection of innovation and digital strategy, Doyle Buehler talks about connecting business leaders and their prime business to their entire digital ecosystem, to help them build a remarkable, profitable digital business, and future-proof and leverage their digital assets with their unique audience.