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organisation, at all levels, and can’t be viewed solely as a technology issue - they offer a way to transform business operations for the better. With this comes different approaches and new, agile ways of working. Chief Data and Digital Officers can help to introduce these working methodologies and further educate their peers, helping shape business strategies in order to deliver exceptional and innovative customer- centric experiences. In turn, more established board members can help those in their first leadership roles to develop the unique skillset needed at such a senior level. This includes, not just excellent business acumen and a focus on solving business problems, but also softer skills such as Emotional Intelligence (EQ), speaking the ‘right’ executive language and building collaborative networks. As all experienced HR professionals will know, finding good digital leaders is not as simple as identifying the candidate with the most experience and expertise in digital technology or data. With such a rapidly-evolving domain, modern leaders need to have a unique skillset, which combines a wide range of business, technical and ‘softer’ skills.
The digital maturity in an organisation will also play a big role in the type of senior roles needed. Relatively digitally immature organisations, for example, may benefit from a Chief Transformation Officer, or a Chief Digital Officer, but those who have already embraced digital transformation to the extent that it is an ingrained part of the business, may be at the stage where they can drop the ‘digital’ from job titles, as for them, there will be no such thing as a non-digital role! However, there are some core elements that need to be considered regardless of digital maturity. Modern leaders need to be agents of change more than ever. They must be a visionary, a disrupter and a master storyteller who needs to be able to articulate the art of the possible to a wide variety of groups, hierarchies and stakeholders. Sourcing talent with the right combination of traditional leadership skills and exceptional digital acumen can be challenging, especially when organisations consistently make the same mistakes in their approach. Many organisations still fail to acknowledge the importance of succession planning. Often seen as the ‘poor relation’ of talent management, succession planning is not always given the attention it deserves, yet if not looked at correctly, it can have severe repercussions. Ideally, succession planning should feed into a wider talent management programme and take a long-term strategic view.
It is not enough to take the approach of looking at current top performers and earmarking them for leadership. Just because an individual is, for example, performing brilliantly in a sales role, this does not mean they will excel in the many areas that are needed for good leadership. Merely focusing on performance does not take into account crucial elements such as; aspiration or motivation. Another common approach that businesses take when it comes to succession planning is to bring people up in
THE TRINITY OF THE CEO, CFO AND COO STILL STANDS FIRM, BUT WITH NEW ‘CHIEFS’ AND TRIUMVIRATES OF; CIO, CDO AND CMO OR CPO WITH A SEAT AT THE TABLE, THIS REFLECTS THE TRANSFORMATIVE INFLUENCE THAT BOTH DIGITAL AND DATA ARE PLAYING ACROSS EVERY INDUSTRY
silos, without exposing them to other business functions and operations. Good succession planning should first identify who has potential - beyond just current performance indicators - and then look to expose these individuals to different areas of the business. For example, if they are going to be expected to manage multi-disciplined teams as a future leader, then they need to have an understanding of each of those business disciplines. Although it may be tempting for the existing leadership team to hire future replacements in their image, to do so may be to ignore the issues future leaders will need to address. The business world is rapidly changing, with new models and technologies turning traditional practices on their heads. Traditional succession planning has taken a very top down approach. It has focused on identifying future leaders and then looking at how the existing leadership team can equip them with the skills, opportunities and experience to step up. It has generally been a very one-way street, of imparting knowledge from the top down. However, just as rapidly evolving technology and disruptive business models call for a different approach to leadership, a different approach to succession planning is needed too. There needs to be greater recognition that senior and junior team members have much to learn from each other. While there is still absolutely a place for experienced leaders to pass on expertise around developing emotional intelligence, good governance and other traditional leadership skills, there is also a need for this education to work both ways. The vast majority of traditional executive teams are not digitally native and, as such, have much to learn from up and coming junior team members who are. Current leaders need to be asking themselves what and, importantly, how they can learn from these future leaders. In the same way that working practices are changing to become more agile and flat structured, so too must succession planning. The organisations that will succeed in a rapidly-changing and evolving business landscape, will be those who can embrace change and harness disruptive technology to become the disruptors themselves. In order to do this, they will need leaders who can combine the very best of old and new skills. Those who can speak the right executive language to sell a vision, and have the emotional intelligence to bring everyone along on a journey and have the right technical knowhow, to fully realise the art of the possible.
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@theHRDIRECTOR TWITTER POLL
Do you believe that your business has a cohesive succession plan?
53% No 47% Yes
*Extract of an answer then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question, at a news briefing on February 12, 2002 about the alleged existence of WMD in Iraq.
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