What: The HBR has identified 5 areas of focus for CEOs who want to successfully lead the digital transformation of their companies

Why it is important: It requires a strong will to adapt and step out of the comfort zone for CEOs as they have to unlearn some pre-existing reflexes and also see the problems with a completely new eye.

The Harvard Business Review recalls that, while the digital transformation is the CEO’s job, it is also a tall order in terms of investments and changes that are needed across the company, and few CEOs have such an experience. This is the reason why the HBR studied some patterns to identify 5 areas where to focus:

• Reimagine value and demystify digital: digital transformation’s point is not to become digital but to generate value. The point is to identify transformative, not incremental, value, and this can be achieved by staying open to the world and visiting many companies from outside the CEOs industry. This should allow to target a domain (a complete core process, or a user journey) large enough to be valuable to the company, but small enough so that all needed changes can be implemented end to end.
• Give a reason to top talents to come work in the company: it is key to help the organisation focus on what really motivates top talents, adjust the company culture and approach to appeal them. The needed changes might not immediately contribute to top-line growth, but they are creating the needed culture for tomorrow. CEOs should also carry the purpose in a very personal way and track their talents’ satisfaction through adequate metrics.
• Bring tech and data front and center: CEOs are not expected to be tech experts, but they should prioritize tech and data in two ways. The first one is to understand how to apply tech and data to solve business problems or crack open opportunities. The second is to make the right organisational changes to ensure that tech and data are embedded into the DNA of the business (this includes having tech leaders’ part of the inner circle in the C-suite and report directly to CEOs).
• Rebuild the operating model for speed: the CEO is instrumental in setting the tempo of critical practices (e.g. reviewing data, sharing findings, reallocating talent), through an process simplification, a governance clarification, and a team progress celebration, with the perspective to create a culture that learns.
• Commit to adoption of digital solutions with the same passion that you commit to strategy: digital CEOs should be as passionate about adoption as they are about strategy, and this implies continually recalibrating and realigning the entire structure to capture the full gains.

As the Harvard Business Review puts it, digital transformation is not a destination, it is a permanent state of evolution, under the watch of the CEO.

The CEO playbook for the digital transformation