Leadership is vital to the development of any business and therefore also crucial for a successful digital transformation. Digital transformation is on the agenda of most organizations, public or private, big or small. In our increasingly digitized economy, company leaders have no choice but to adopt a new mindset and invest in technology and digital assets.
However, genuine digital transformation often doesn’t happen and the company is simply “digitized,” meaning the change is only a replacement of an old process or action rather than a genuine, end-to-end, integrated business transformation. Digital transformation means rediscovering the business, developing new skills and creating new opportunities.
Increasingly, companies invest in new technologies, such as blockchain, the cloud or the Internet of things, because they strongly believe in their potential for value creation or innovation. Nevertheless, there is a risk. We have seen how companies without the right skills and organizational capacity lose out when it comes to optimization and value creation.
"The tricky part isn’t investing in digital assets, but identifying the right investment decisions and implementing them in a way that creates real value."
They are unable to translate the changes that come with new technologies into a business impact at the industrial, organizational or individual level. In other words, the tricky part isn’t investing in digital assets, but identifying the right investment decisions and implementing them in a way that creates real value. Doing so requires knowledge of the company, its business environment and its customers, but also of technology and its risks.
This calls for a specific skill set, which the European Commission defines as e-leadership skills. Digital leaders, or e-leaders, aren’t simply leaders with digital skills – they combine business knowledge (for example, business models and strategies) with understanding of technology (upcoming technologies and the risks and opportunities of new technology) and classic leadership skills (conviction, mentoring and mediation).
"Our particular focus is on the design and implementation of the various administrative, management and architectural capacities needed to unlock the true value of digital transformation."
For more than 25 years, AMS has researched all these areas. Our particular focus is on the design and implementation of the various administrative, management and architectural capacities needed to unlock the true value of digital transformation. We have brought this accumulated knowledge together in our “Digital Business & IT” training portfolio, in which we help managers, CEOs, CIOs and specialists to build the bridge between information technology and business.