Digital leadership requires a shift in how leaders must think, act, and react. A recent study by Deloitte indicated 72 percent of organizations are developing new leadership programs focused on digital leadership (Bersin, 2018). What is digital leadership? Employees now want and deserve more technology in the workplace. I know from working with our customers that organizations want sooner versus later conversation-based systems, voice recognition, and chatbots to enable greater productivity and we are already looking to social networking systems for critical elements like onboarding, communication, and learning.
These changes require a different type of leader with a much faster plan of action and a vision for the future. SAP CEO Bill McDermott said:
The pace of adoption has gone from 10 years to as little as a week. Adoption is so fast that the innovation cycle must be much faster for companies. With mobile enabling billions of users to be connected, a new technology like augmented reality or digital assistants can reach maturity at scale in one to two years. In the industrial and even in the internet economies, we had some modest buffer between early adoption and mainstream adoption. Today we don’t. It’s almost to the point where we have only two categories: early adopters and also-rans. Perfection can no longer be the enemy of ‘good is enough.’ It’s all about speed to innovation and differentiation. Companies that act with urgency will win.