Reinforce Digital Competency in the Boardroom

Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity. 

The new paradigm arises out of new knowledge, the emergent trends can shape the behavior of future enterprises and some have been happening already. BoDs as top leadership roles need to envision, proactively influence changes, reinforce digitalization and lead the organization towards its future confidently.

Reinforce the digital mindset: The digital fit mindset is about how to think forward, strategically, creatively, positively, and systematically. This is particularly important at the board level. The board directors are senior leaders who can step out of a conventional box or linear patterns, so they can see things further, mine future openly, and share their vision generously. Digital Boards are getting better as the digital awareness grows of how important board composition is in order to lead in today’s digital dynamic. As different generations grow up with different beliefs and perspectives. Thus, the conditions of the economy, the state of the world, technology, and social trends all impact the overall behavior of the generation and shape the future of the organization. The key to organizational success is to integrate the next generation of leaders, tap into their way of looking at the world, solving problems in a very collaborative working style. To effectively respond to digital dynamics. It is time to reinforce digital thinking in the boardroom by breaking down silo mentality, pre-conceptual bias or bureaucracy. The BoDs must begin thinking about ways with strategic planning to broaden their ecosystem viewpoint by capturing emerging trends, monitoring digital performance, and setting tones for digital transformation. In addition to the set point changing, the ecosystem perspective as the digital shaper allows the organization to explore digital in all directions, grow the company as a living thing, and perceive the business through multidimensional lens such as the lenses of information technology, sociology, psychology, the economics of education, the anthropology of cultures, economics, organizational and communication sciences, poetical science.

Reinforce digital principles: You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without breaking some old rules, and reinforce the digital principles. The board of directors plays a critical role in setting policies and principles for changes and digital transformation, accelerate business performance, and improving organizational maturity. Digital principles and rules are statements of belief that reflect the values, culture and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc Overcoming complication and managing complexity become one of the biggest challenges in business today. The digital principles as a compass will guide all levels of the organization to operate more as the human body operates with the cells (employees) and organs (functions) of the organization, being able to make a decision in a very organic relationship with its dynamic environment. By following the digital principles and rules, the business lifecycle could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of reorganizing, refocusing, rebalancing resources, and redirecting people to understand the whole, in terms of its inner processes, its interactions with external systems, its components, the specific interaction among them, etc, to ultimately achieve the seamless digital flow and high-level digital maturity.

Reinforce “lessons learned”: Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity, which is not only about technical excellence or process efficiency but also about being able to get all the way around the task and rethink the alternative ways to solve today’s complex problems. Board directors are seasoned executives who can provide invaluable insight based on their enriched experience and reinforce “lesson learned.” Digital transformation cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the digital organization. Learn from the past problems and challenges along with encouraging others to learn from the problems that have happened. Also, they can contribute to the unique viewpoint as the business outlier because they don’t evolve in the everyday business. Keep in mind though, your windshield is larger than your rearview mirror for a reason. Sometimes looking at the past too long or too much inhibits looking forward and make the progress. This is particularly important for the senior leadership team such as BoDs. Any lessons learned are helpful in future progress. However, when experience saturates your mind, you are not open to understanding beyond what you’ve already known, such an experience trap will make your knowledge stale and stifle innovation. It’s always important to develop the next set of practices for fitting your organization's circumstance and growth needs. Organizations strive to adopt the"best practices" for digitalization throughout their organization, they also need to explore the next practices for riding change curves and reaching the next level of business maturity.

Digital organizations are complex systems that are dynamic, self-evolving, and self-perpetuating. Thus, the directorship in any organization must be able to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate. They should be able to see further and perceive better than others in order to steer the business on the thorny journey of the digital paradigm shift. Sharpening “directorship” and reinforcing digitalization are imperative for setting the top leadership tone to make a seamless digital paradigm shift.

Posted in: Board Room,Digital Master,Digitalization