Digital Reinforcement Management Practices

Organizations are moving from doing digital via experimenting some digital technologies to going digital via expanding to all dimensions for a holistic digital transformation. 

Many organizations are on the journey of digital transformation which represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its digital ecosystem, with people at the center of its focus. However, every business evolves digital with varying speed. There are stresses in business leadership because organizations must respond to continuous digital disruptions and the increasing pace of changes proactively. Businesses need to become more adaptive, innovative and resilient. Here are three digital reinforcement management practices they should take in order to get digital ready psychologically, technologically, sociologically.

Reinforcing digital mindsets: The unprecedented digital convenience brought by digital technologies changes the way we live, we work, and even how we think. Nowadays, physical boundaries such as oceans, mountains, or deserts can no longer limit us from either gaining new knowledge or communicating with people across the globe. It is time to reinforce digital thinking via breaking down silo mentality, pre-conceptual bias or bureaucracy. Digital fitness comes via cognitive fitness either at the individual or the organizational level. The digital fit mindset is about how to think forward, strategically, creatively, positively, and systematically. In addition to the set point changing, digital paradigm shift requires first shifting mindsets and then building new skills, capabilities, and reinforcing digital thinking processes such as creativity, critical thinking, pattern thinking, and other cognitive skills for either making effective decisions or solving complex problems. It is also important to leverage collective mindsets to brainstorm new ideas or co-develop knowledge. In the organizational scope, it’s about building a culture (the collective mindset) of creativity, goes a step further and involves internalization of the outside the box thinking and digital conceptual model. And digital leadership can connect the minds and transmit energy to the variety of people, giving them a sense of confidence in achieving a well-framed digital vision with the long-term business perspective.

Reinforce digital principles, processes, and practices: Digital does flatten the organizational hierarchy and blur the functional, organizational, and geographical borders in the business ecosystem. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without breaking some old rules, optimizing certain business processes, or updating outdated best practices. Digital encourages autonomy and innovation. That means less restrictive rules or bureaucracy, but it also means the guiding principles become more crucial to be defined as core decision values and behavior guidelines to practice multifaceted management discipline. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into a highly innovative digital powerhouse. Most of the organizations commit theoretically to process optimization, but they haven’t achieved the full potential by exploring it more strategically and systematically. High-performing digital organizations have to reinforce a set of clearly defined digital principles, always take process improvement and business optimization as a journey, develop their own set of tailored best and next practices to keep the business in the innovative mode for managing change, scaling up and amplifying digital effects.

Reinforce accountability: Lack of accountability is often one of the biggest obstacles in the organization (especially in large and well-established businesses) to get things done, stifle changes and decelerate digitalization. Digital organizations are flatter, with an “every individual as a stakeholder” culture, to close the accountability gap through improving cross-functional collaboration, open door listening, transparency, and empathy. Poor leadership or management is the root cause to lack of accountability because people don’t feel “safe,” or run away from accountability because they had a personal experience or they have observed others being treated poorly or unfairly when being held accountable for results. Therefore, it is important to build a culture of accountability at the organizational level. Stressing out employees is not helpful to the company or its stakeholders in the long-run. Accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power, to advocate the digital style of autonomy and self-management. If you ensure the individuals have the autonomy within their tasks, you will be able to address performance on an equal partnership base. The right formula to reinforce accountability also depends on the organization and what they are trying to accomplish. Shared accountability or collective accountability involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, the true measure of accountability is about resilience and ensure the workforce is professionally healthy and the workplace is positive, productive, and innovative.

Organizations are moving from doing digital via experimenting some digital technologies to going digital via expanding to all dimensions for a holistic digital transformation. The digital journey is neither a flat road nor a straight line. There are quite many bumps or curves along the way. It is important to make the necessary adjustment and management reinforcement for steering the business in the right direction and stepping into the deep digital new normal steadfastly.

Posted in: Digital Master,Digitalization,Principle/Practice