Common Traits of the Best Digital Leaders
Leaders must develop new skills to effectively guide their organizations into the uncertain future of the digital age.
Strong digital leaders are very much in demand, as our digital business research clearly shows. We asked more than 4,300 global executives whether their organizations need to find new leaders to succeed in the digital age: 68% indicate that their organization does, in fact, need new leadership to compete. Even more striking, there is surprisingly little variance across maturity categories for these responses: 77% of respondents from early-stage companies report that they need new leaders, as do 55% of respondents from maturing companies. On the whole, more than half of digitally maturing companies still say they lack strong leadership.
What Is Digital Maturity?
Digital maturity was measured in our 2018 study similar to the way it was measured in prior years. We asked respondents to “imagine an ideal organization transformed by digital technologies and capabilities that improve processes, engage talent across the organization, and drive new value-generating business models.” We then asked respondents to rate their company against that ideal on a scale of 1 to 10. Three maturity groups were observed: “early” (1-3), “developing” (4-6), and “maturing” (7-10).
Organizations shouldn’t simply lament the absence of genuine digital leadership, however; they must recognize that finding and developing the right talent is truly difficult. In a continually changing competitive environment, leaders constantly face new challenges and must adapt both the organization and their leadership style to this new environment. Successfully meeting these challenges requires new skills and capabilities that leaders have not needed in the past.
We asked executives what traits they wished leaders had more of to help their organizations navigate digital trends. Somewhat surprisingly, the traits cited were similar across maturity levels.
Our research finds that digitally maturing companies are distinguishing themselves from their less mature counterparts through the development of talent into inspiring digital leaders. While 63% of maturing companies say they are effectively cultivating the types of leaders they report needing, only 33% of developing-stage companies (and a paltry 13% of early-stage companies) say they are effectively developing these kinds of leaders. All types of companies lack qualified leaders to effectively lead their companies amid digital disruption, but maturing companies are far more likely to do something about it and actively develop those leaders.
Although responses suggest that leaders need to understand technology, technical skills per se are not a prerequisite for effective digital leadership. Digital leadership is about leading in the new business environment created by digital disruption, not about mastering technology. People report that being change oriented or having a transformative vision is more important. Furthermore, the research suggests that these traits build on each other. Taken together, they paint a compelling composite picture of what effective leadership looks like in a digital environment.
Digital technologies have changed the competitive and organizational environment. Leaders must develop new skills to effectively guide their organizations into this uncertain future. The bad news is that few leaders have the necessary skills to do so today; the good news is that many are beginning to develop them. If you want to be a digital leader or, like 68% of others, feel like your company needs more of them, it’s not too late. The time to start is now.
Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane is a professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and the MIT Sloan Management Review guest editor for the Digital Business Initiative. He tweets @profkane.
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