Francesco Starace of Enel—the Italy-based power company, said at a recent webinar. 

“Ninety percent of the problem (with digital transformation) is that the people who are supposed to drive digital transformation are the most ignorant,”

The first thing you will learn about digital transformation is that there are 1000s of suppliers who tell you they have a piece of technology that will give you digital transformation.  It won't.

It was Grady Booch who famously said "A fool with a tool is still a fool." 

As a business leader you have to understand that digital transformation will come from within your business, here is some interesting research from MIT

"MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) reveals that enterprises that invest in building the digital skills of their internal workforce significantly outperform those who cut back"

And to support that, research from Korn Ferry.

"That conclusion is supported by conducted similar analysis from management and recruitment consultancy Korn Ferry which arrived at much the same conclusions – the most successful business are those who take a longer-term view on building a workforce capable of navigating and thriving through the challenges of the future."

How Digital Has Transformed The World of Business

In this October 2020 report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.  

Worldwide social media users: 4.14 billion - 53% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.

Simon says that "two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media."

Let's not forget that 88% of the internet enabled world (4.14 Billion) are active social media users.

So What as a CEO do You Need to Do?

First you need strategy.  You need to define what support you need, what challenges you have (technology, people and process) and you need a mission for your strategy.  This is not about having a transaction, it's about having a long term plan both for the leadership team and the employees.

It is about changing behaviours.  It is NOT about teaching the CEO Twitter.

Catherine Coale at Telstra Purple uses this mission statement for their digital transformation.  Telstra Purple are investing in a digital transformation, by investing in it's people, Catherine has an update on this in her blog here. 

In addition to the mission statement, we would recommend that you run a workshop (over Zoom or Teams of course) understand what are your objectives for being "digital".  One of our clients came up with this, yours made be different. 

After building your mission and your objectives you then need to brainstorm, what good looks like and the blockers for people, process and technology.  Why do you need to do this?  Let's change gear here and look at how digital is impacting your business.

You know as I do that your business needs to more to digital.  We both know that is scary, but help is at hand.

There is also a great blog about how CEOs being on social has become best practice.