Funky funky – digital culture!
It takes a confident long term digital strategy and some well thought through risks, investment in business technology architecture and an obsessive focus on customer needs to make omni-channel work for your business. You will also want to focus on putting ‘Digital’ at the cultural heart of the business.
If all that jargon sounds much too modern and hip for you, don’t despair. Digital Culture doesn’t have to be ‘funky’.
I always look for 3 things when auditing culture. One is the way that the organisation treats it customers and employees, another is how and where decisions are made and the final one is the level of collaboration. Internal collaboration is a key driver of change within your workforce.
High level collaboration
A well thought through transformation plan that places digital matters alongside other business requirement will ensure strategic priorities and investment decisions become part of the same process and are therefore, easier to make.
Collaboration at a strategic level your business will benefit from an improved speed of decision making and ultimately a quicker pace of digital change which will in turn give you a competitive edge.
High levels of collaboration can unite business silos – low levels can lead to duplication of effort or even sabotage of good ideas. Teamwork and cooperation are important to any transformation, digital or otherwise and for digital change it’s a must.
Contented employees give a better customer experience
But to truly make a difference you will need collaboration working at all levels in a business, not just at a strategic level. It is a superb value to have when you are embarking on a digital agenda because it unleashes ideas, innovation and creativity about how to transform the business or the customer experience and it drives employee happiness, or at least contentment! What seems to resonate with employees is the fact that your company has allowed them to make a positive difference in the world around them.
Employees generally want to feel that they impact the bigger picture, and involving them in digital plans gives them a voice, a sense of purpose and an investment in the future of your business.
Funky Offices
Collaboration appears to have much more of an impact on culture than all the funky office spaces, work life balance, progressive workplace labels or benefits you can shake a stick at. But successful collaboration requires everyone to have a voice, not just the usual suspects. So as a leader you should consider how to get everyone to participate in putting forward new ideas – get everyone in every business participating. This is no mean feat.
When you are designing your digital strategy, give some thought to how you will develop the type of culture that will ensure your plans succeed. It doesn’t have to be funky – it does have to focus on the customer….and the employee!
Ruth Gawthorpe is the owner of The Change Directors – Business transformation experts who know how to win the hearts, minds and involvement of your people. Call Ruth on 07976 509 551 for a chat about your plans.
