A CEO's 8 Digital Skills
By Marc Cortés, ESADE Professor of Digital Marketing and partner and CEO of RocaSalvatella
We live in a digital world that is global, hyper-connected and swiftly-changing. Digital technology has greatly altered the fabric of business. Today, digital transformation of business is needed to ensure companies' survival in the uncertain future and fast-shifting present. However, if companies are to thrive in this harsh environment, they need CEOs who have certain digital skills and who are capable of leading far-reaching change processes.
The digital transformation affects all areas and departments of a company and the CEO Is the only one who has the authority and ability to lead a cross-cutting programme. According to Henry Mintzberg, a renowned expert in the management field, a manager’s job involves adopting different roles in different situations, bringing a measure of order to the chaos that tends to reign in organisations. Driving, co-ordinating and ordering this process requires vast knowledge of digital skills.
Based on analysis conducted at RocaSalvatella, there are 8 main digital skills that all business leaders need if they are to successfully lead change. They are skills that CEOs must acquire not only to do their own jobs but also to ensure others do theirs. Hence the need to foster these skills among staff and for the CEO to put his or her "stamp" on them.
1. Digital knowledge
To pilot change, the CEO must be capable of operating in the digital economy thus he needs a deep grasp of the digital setting, its nature and the role of and opportunities created by this field. This skill can only be mastered by organisations and teams that readily accept a cross-cutting approach, "Open Innovation", working with others and collective intelligence as part of the firm’s "DNA".
2. Information management
The ability to organise and share digital contexts is vital for: (1) drawing up strategic guidelines that fully take account of the competitive advantages conferred by digital technology; (2) ensuring proper management of corporate information and human resources (within and/or outside the company).
3. Digital communication
Good information management requires the ability to deal with digital tools and digital settings. To be effective, communication needs to be on-going, relevant and properly targeted at its audience(s). This is something that most CEOs do not do when they build through own social networks. Only 4% of senior managers in Ibex 35 companies have a Twitter profile, in Linkedin, 31% have inactive profiles and 68% incomplete ones, according to a study by the online marketing agency Websa100.
4. Networked approach
This refers to collaboration and co-operation in digital settings and is directly linked to the ability to communicate digitally. This skill enhances traditional skills such as teamwork, forging links, and pooling and creating ideas with others to create collaboration-based knowledge.
5. Continuous learning
To train him/herself, the CEO needs to know how to manage his own learning, know of and use digital resources and take part in learning communities. Furthermore, the CEO is also responsible for the strategic orientation of programmes and initiatives for ensuring continuous learning among his staff.
6. Strategic vision
The strategy takes into account the roles played by social networks, mobile devices, information, and collaborative approaches in improving products and boosting sales and profits. It is vital that the CEO grasp how technology helps one to guide growth by changing how the firm operates in markets.
7. Networked leadership
A business leader also needs to be the lynchpin of a network. That is to say, he or she should be in the vanguard when it comes to digital settings and should lead networked teams. Being a leader in this field enables one to detect, develop and boost the skills of team members. This helps make staff more innovative and willing to take calculated risks in relation to new technology.
8. Customer-oriented
The last skill is the ability to interact with new customers, grasp their needs and nature and give them what they want. Consumers are ever more demanding, hence the need to find solutions to their problems. This in turn requires active participation in the Internet.
Most business leaders do not have the 8 digital skills set out in this article. Even though most CEOs think that neither they nor their firms are well-prepared for the cultural changes of the digital revolution.
Companies continue to follow "analogue" approaches in their organisations and in their staff recruitment and development practices. Digital investment tends to be concentrated in just a few fields, such as operational efficiency (69%) or improving consumer satisfaction (61%). These data are taken from Accenture, the management, technology and outsourcing consulting firm. They reveal the difficulty companies are experiencing in tackling change and their badly distorted view of "The Digital Dimension". These problems require urgent solution given that digital technology increasingly affects both how organisations work and their chances of long-term survival.
