But here's your chance to differentiate!
There's little doubt that the future of business is digital. Today's senior executives must influence, negotiate and innovate quickly. Consequently, the demand for C-suite hard skills in artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning techniques, and cybersecurity has increased. Have you wondered why leaders seem to prioritise regulating the use of AI rather than (safely) exploiting it? How digitally savvy are these executive teams?
In a 2021 MIT Sloan Management Review study of 1,984 large companies, only 7% have digitally savvy executive teams. And yet:
companies with digitally savvy executive teams have 48% higher revenue growth and 15% higher net margins, and
for every 10% increase in top team digital savviness, there is a 0.4 percentage point (pp) increase in profitability and a 0.7 pp increase in revenue growth.
Those in the top 25% of digital savviness have substantially increased:
innovation (% of revenues from new offerings in the past three years),
completion of transformation,
rapid learning (for example, test and learn, minimum viable products, sharing lessons, evidence-based decisions),
automated decision-making,
shift from command-and-control to a coach-and-communicate orientation,
holding people accountable,
and so on.
More surprisingly, only 47% of CTOs and 45% of CIOs could be considered "digitally savvy". And only 24% of COOs, 23% of CEOs and 12% of CFOs.
Unsurprisingly, we field demand for coaching, strategy and advice from non-CIO / non-CISO / non-CTO executives. The world is complex, but at the end of the day, value comes from innovation. It starts at the top (or the top of your bit) - you can drive the culture.
Digitally savvy executives win at the business-technology relationship because they can identify and deliver an actionable strategy and a robust business model alongside a business process inventory.
Organisations and individuals recognising the need must first:
determine the current level of digital savviness
strengthen the key members first, and then
expand the effort.
We can help with every facet of this.