Companies should regularly assess their digital capabilities as a core competency. Diverse talent enables and is enabled by a learning organization culture that embraces open-mindedness, critical thinking, fresh ideas and contrarian points of view fueled by data. Feedback loops from interactions with customers, suppliers and other outside parties broaden employee participation, invigorate the creative innovative process and help root out unconscious bias. In summary, directors and CEOs face three givens. First, speed matters. Speed is dictated by the market and is influenced by external and internal factors. Markets evolve, and so must companies — at speed. The tailwind effect from embracing relevant change at market speed breeds confidence in the C-suite and boardroom. Second, customer loyalty is fleeting unless it is earned with superior products and services. Thus, business in the digital age is like a Formula 1 race: If the car isn’t fast enough, its driver has no chance of winning, much less competing. To manage at speed in business, the company must at least be as fast to adapt as — with emphasis on being faster than — agile followers in the industry. Finally, as trite as it may sound, talent wins. The war for talent is over. Talent won because there simply isn’t enough of it walking the streets. The business reality of the digital age is that time and speed in business have evolved beyond the tactical to emphasize a more strategic and holistic view that challenges conventional thinking,
create flexibility and infuse agility into operating principles and processes to navigate continued waves of change imposed by the market. They can do this through adjusting their priorities and focus to take advantage of new potential value streams, rapidly solve for jobs to be done and facilitate pivots in response to changing customer needs, shifts in supply and demand and advances in enabling technology. Employing agile as a broader business mindset will prove decisive in defining the leaders emerging from periods of downturn or business disruption. Set the tone for lean behaviors with a supportive organizational structure. With the board ’s support, the CEO should encourage an open, flexible and agile organizational structure with a flat hierarchy that drives efficiencies, speeds up innovation cycles and facilitates collaboration, communication and rapid decision-making and execution. Executive sponsors should empower focused, dedicated teams armed with purpose and clear objectives to tackle well-defined tasks, as assisted by appropriate ecosystem partners. Sponsors close to the executive team should set expectations and keep efforts on the fast track. Select the talent that will lead to success and embrace learning at market speed. Directors and executive leaders should understand technology and digital business models and take an active role in digital leadership. They should encourage the investments needed in recruiting, onboarding, developing and training employees and retaining critical talent.
more personal. Customer- facing teams should focus on harmonizing automation and personalization to meet customers’ expectations of a personalized experience. Often, this requires an integration of competencies across the organization that can be challenging to orchestrate. The collective sales, service and marketing perspectives and customer behavioral insights should be combined to break through internal barriers and drive improvements to the customer experience. Weave innovation into the fabric of the operating model. In today’s marketplace, efforts to differentiate the business or customer strategy are harder to sustain and may result in advantages of shorter duration than in the past. Ways of working that infuse innovation into the business — with the intention of continuously differentiating in the market — are required to sustain competitive advantage. Accordingly, leaders should couple technology and operational expertise with insightful customer knowledge and an innovative culture that encourages experimentation to design new products, business models and growth strategies facilitated by automation and a resilient, adaptive culture. An innovative mindset should be applied across all areas of the business to foster value-added outcomes in growing and scaling the business. Employ agility as a business mindset — not just a methodology. Uncertainty is here to stay. Yet with uncertainty also comes opportunity. Organizations need to
28 | April/May 2024
Governance & Risk
CCI Magazine
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