Kathy Gibson is at the Deloitte Tech Trends launch – Today’s business leaders are digitally mature, and have certain traits embedded in their corporate DNA.
Hans van Grieken, EMEA technology research and insights leader in Deloitte’s global CIO programme, explains that leaders tend to exhibit the same character traits.
Companies that are digital leaders are strategy-led; digitally mature; talent driven; empowered; long-term thinkers; are strong in people development; collaborative; leadership-driven; innovative; agile; make investment; and undertake experimentation and risk-taking.
These digital traits combine is various ways to form four distinct clusters of companies.
Talent and strategy leaders would tend to be the most successful, followed by fast-moving experimenters.
Organisations that are not set up for success are the chasers and laggards, Van Grieken says.
Laggards tend to score badly on all of the character traits that leaders exhibit. “They don’t know where they are, they don’t know where they are going, and they have no plan,” Van Grieken says.
“There is no leadership, no digital maturity and no investment. So they don’t try stuff.”
Chasers, on the other hand, do make the investment, but they still perform badly. “They are spending a lot of money, but they have no idea where they are going.”
The fast-moving experimenters, on the other hand, score well in the areas of experimentation and risk-taking as well as in innovation. They tend to be leadership driven and collaborative; while being agile and empowered. They score badly on long-term thinking, however.
The talent and strategy leaders perform very well on recruiting talent and people development, and they are also strongly leadership driven.
These leaders are digitally mature and they have clear strategies, while also scoring positively on all the DNA traits that identify success.
Informal statistics indicate that 24% of South African organisations are fast-moving experimenters, with 31% identifying as talent and strategy leaders.
However, 27% are chasers and 18% still laggards.