Part 1: Eassy
Positive and negative aspects for leaders in the context of digital transformation (DT)
DT has been transforming business dynamics by changing the traditional model of business operations. Leaders must leverage technological advances to move towards a sustainable strategy to thrive in the competitive environment. In their study, Bughin et al. (2018) discussed that DT presents numerous opportunities for leaders regarding efficiency and innovation. Leaders can leverage advanced technologies for managing data-driven decision-making and improving customer service. Despite these positive aspects, the authors significantly highlighted that a lack of understanding regarding the increasing momentum of digitization is one of the negative aspects for leaders who consider the DT as an upgraded IT function or sales and marketing tool. The authors highlight that a misunderstanding of the economics of digital is a negative aspect that digital can destroy the economic rent. Moreover, a concept such as winner-takes-all economics is another significant aspect for companies to avoid adopting DT for a large-scale transformation. The changing model of business, such as the groceries of the USA, is transforming towards platforms like Amazon another aspect of DT that is hard to adopt across the globe due to different levels of customer demand and economic conditions. The positive and negative aspects of the DT need to be evaluated extensively for formulating strategies for addressing business challenges.
Strategies of leaders for addressing business problems
The leaders should activate the curiosity of the workers by motivating them towards innovation. The modern era of business is characterized by uncertainties and changes that can only be resolved through continuous innovation and experimentation for new pathways. The categorization of workers into specific roles is important for optimizing their innovation potential (Deloitte, 2023). Moreover, leaders should mitigate the boundaries between humans and technology by adapting to new technologies such as automation and augmented reality. The leadership skills can be evaluated under the new strengths required in the growing digital advancement. Critical thinking is one of the important skills for leaders to nurture strong instinctive values with nuanced evidence. The uncertain business environment poses significant limitations for organizations to hold onto a certain principle; rather, it urges continuous change as per the requirements.
The redefinition of the workplace is also associated with the future of technological advancement that will blend the physical and virtual worlds. Thus, the leaders must focus on a strategic framework to motivate the workers to adopt the future conditions. The survey of Global Human Capital Trends demonstrates that worker involvement is one of the significant factors for getting positive outcomes. Thus, leaders should focus on worker engagement through utilizing technological tools that can reduce the workload and improve engagement.
Effectiveness of strategies to create competitive advantage
The competitive market drives all companies to make constant changes. However, the strategies for increasing adaptability and innovation are the two major aspects of the new business world. The effectiveness of these strategies aligns with a diverse workforce that is identified as strategies to fit the real-world talent pool (Deloitte, 2023). The effectiveness of strategies is also associated with the impression management of the workers, such as the fear of adopting new things or taking risks. Leaders can significantly motivate workers or employees to take risks by ensuring their position and security, to bring out new ideas. The current uncertain business often poses significant challenges for employees or managers to invest in new ideas, but the leaders in the era of DT should take the risk to nurture the talent of the employees to foster better adaptability. Moreover, the changing dimensions of the work culture with the impact of globalization require dynamic skills for managing diverse multicultural teams. Thus, the hesitancy of taking new opportunities or risks needs to be managed by the leaders of the new digital era, considering the demand for constant change and upgradation. As opined by Edmondson (2019), interpersonal fear negatively impacts learning behavior. The strategies are significant enough to upgrade the overall practices of an organization through optimizing critical skills, such as effective communication and collaboration. Communication is one of the significant successful factors due to the increasing practices of hybrid or remote work. Moreover, distant team management can be effectively done through the skills. Communication enhances the clarity of work, which is also important for fostering a positive organization culture that is multicultural. The long-range network regarding different operational sectors needs to work collaboratively. Thus, the leader’s role in collaborating with all the sections of the organization is important, which can be facilitated by leveraging advanced technologies. Moreover, competitive advantage is widely dependent on the adaptive skills of an organization. In this respect, leaders can play a fundamental role in enhancing the adaptability skills that can widen the path for innovation and experimentation for achieving higher resilience in the ever-changing business environment. Thus, the effectiveness of the strategy can be understood as the approaches of leaders to provide psychological safety that can motivate workers to adopt a new learning approach to develop ideas, leveraging the DT.
Part 2: Proposal to the Editor – Harvard Business Review
Proposed Article Title: Digital Transformation Through Employee Empowerment: A New Path to Sustainable Innovation
Central Message of the Article
This article will analyse the critical aspect of embracing digital transformation, which is not using digital technology but the workforce’s engagement in embracing this culture. However, many firms focus on digital technological changes such as AI, automation, and cloud platforms. In contrast, the ability of the employee to implement and adapt to these changes remains unnoticed. The main argument is that an organization focusing on people in digital transformation and management will be more sustainable, agile, and resilient.
Important, Useful, and New about This Idea
Digital transformation is not an innovation, but the concept of how to go about it should change. Most articles published in HBR relating to digital transformation are centered on a top-down approach, leaders’ attitudes, or the use of digital technologies (Westerman et al., 2014). Yet, other studies have revealed that change initiatives do not fail for reasons such as having a flawed strategy and adoption of inadequate technologies but lack of employee commitment and resistance to change (Bughin et al., 2018). This proposal also entails the need to stop thinking about technology and start thinking about employees.
This seems paradoxical because entrusting more decision-making powers to the employee has been considered precarious in enhancing creativity and productivity. Businesses that encourage their employees to drive changes in the application of digital technologies have better outcomes than those that try to control them. For example, when front-line employees are allowed to test, provide feedback, and tweak technologies, they facilitate sensible change that works (Iansiti & Lakhani, 2020). This insight takes the ‘bottom-up innovation’ trend and applies it, particularly to digital transformation for organizations.
Managers Need to Know About This
Throughout their professional lives, managers are expected to spearhead change management efforts in their organizations. However, this is not without common problems, such as resistance to change, change inertia, and low return on investment. This article will explain to managers why employee engagement in digital strategy an option is not just but a must-have. The article will provide guidelines to managers on how to:
- Create a culture of digital curiosity and learning
- Build cross-functional teams that include frontline staff
- Use agile methods that rely on continuous feedback from users
- Train employees on new tools and involve them in pilot projects
- Recognize and reward employee-led innovation
Managers must understand that digital transformation is not a technology initiative but a people initiative. There’s no better example of this: digital strategies cannot be effective without employees on board. However, when employees are part of the solution, the transformation becomes faster and cheaper; even when it comes to ideas, it becomes innovative.
Application to Today’s Business Environment
The modern business environment is highly uncertain after the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Most organizations went on a digital transformation spree, but this was done without laying the right foundations to sustain the process. McKinsey’s study shows that only 16% of the companies stated that their digital transformations helped enhance their performance and prepared them for change in the long run (Bughin et al., 2018). One of them is that most corporations were eager to emphasize velocity rather than sustainability.
In today’s environment, sustainability in digital change, therefore, means creating sustainable systems. Employee involvement provides that flexibility. For instance, in Amazon, the warehouse employees constantly provide feedback about the robotics and the logistics related software to the company to enhance the existing systems in real time. In this case, DBS Bank in Singapore has incorporated the use of digital training for all the employees and encourages them to come up with innovations using what is referred to as “hackathons.” These companies have innovation written into it not just into the technology.
The article will present such real-life examples and connect them to modern business issues. Technological advancements, rise in new generation employees, and factors such as economic instabilities put pressure on the managers to develop new models of leading digital change.
Source of Authority and Previous Work
This proposal is grounded on the concepts and theories of organizational change management, employee engagement, and innovation management. It especially links findings from the digital transformation literature to the current literature on psychological safety and the voice of employees.
My idea builds on:
- Digital Transformation Playbook by Westerman et al. (2014), which presents the process of change but does not analyze the employee engagements.
- Competing in the Age of AI by Iansiti & Lakhani (2020), which describes how digital operating models are established but pays more attention to systems rather than people.
- The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson (2018) indicates that psychological safety enhances innovation. This is to the point of enhancing staff engagement during change.
- The latest Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Report concluded that 83% of the institutions think that engagement of the employees is crucial for change, but only 26% are confident they are prepared to engage employees (Deloitte, 2023).
Personal, Academic, and Professional Experience
I am pursuing my Ph.D. in digital business leadership, specializing in strategic transformation. In my latest research, focusing on midsize companies using AI and automation, I found that firms will fail if the staff does not participate. I also provided a case about a manufacturing company that failed to include the line workers in the digitization process. However, the company changed this policy and invited the staff to contribute, which led to improvements in the system’s circulation.
These experiences, therefore, pointed out that while leadership and technology are critical aspects of digital transformation, the subject is human at its core. I have also worked in a digital strategy consultancy, where I implemented cloud systems in small organizations. In almost all projects, the issue of inclusion was a key factor in determining whether the staff would succeed. This is because I have both an academic background and practical experience in the field, which enables me to write this article.
Gap in Practice and Business Problem
The lack of employee engagement remains the most significant gap in digital transformation practice. It is not only human resources departments that rely on the influx of research papers but, more importantly, the leaders who enjoy the concept of “agile” and “user-centered design” but never bother to apply it internally. Many refused to consult the employees or involve them only when needed—usually after a lot of decisions have already been made.
This leads to two big problems:
- Employee Resistance – People don’t trust new systems they didn’t help build.
- Missed Insights – Employees often have the best knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in daily operations.
When these voices are neglected, organizations create organizational structures to support impractical and challenging operational digital initiatives. Using this business problem, this article will propose a novel solution: an employee-driven approach to transformation that eliminates this gap.
Conclusion
This article will interest Harvard Business Review readers and provide them with fresh, timely, and practical insights. It goes one step further than the strategic frameworks and management models to address the actual driver of change in people. This is where you need to step in and empower your employees, and this is the one thing many organizations have failed to do and that is all because this is the one thing that is mandatory in this era of the competitive business environment. This article demonstrates how leaders can apply theory, exemplars, and best practices to re-vision the change process. The following article proposal seems suited to be submitted to the Strategy or Innovation department of the Harvard Business Review.
Reference
Bughin, J., Catlin, T., Hirt, M., & Willmott, P. (2018). Why digital strategies fail. McKinsey Quarterly, 1(1), 14-25. https://www.mckinsey.com/cn/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/McKinsey%20Digital/Our%20Insights/Why%20digital%20strategies%20fail/Why-digital-strategies-fail.pdf
Deloitte. (2023). 2023 Global Human Capital Trends: New fundamentals for a boundaryless world. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2023.html
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons. https://www.lean.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/pl_Psychological_Safety.pdf
Iansiti, M., & Lakhani, K. R. (2020). Competing in the age of AI: Strategy and leadership when algorithms and networks run the world. Harvard Business Review Press. https://rudyct.com/sm.vuca/Competing%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20AI%20Strategy%20and%20Leadership%20When%20Algorithms%20and%20Networks%20Run%20the%20World%20by%20Karim%20R.%20Lakhani,%20Harvard%20BR%202020.pdf
Westerman, G., Bonnet, D., & McAfee, A. (2014). Leading digital: Turning technology into business transformation. Harvard Business Press. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Fh9eBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR4&dq=Westerman,+G.,+Bonnet,+D.,+%26+McAfee,+A.+(2018).+Leading+digital:+Turning+technology+into+business+transformation.+Harvard+Business+Review+Press.&ots=oaPly35ro7&sig=qOW-FY_bm6OL35A_mBfHNZMr07c&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
