At a recent Coffee with Digital Trailblazers, we discussed who are the right people to lead digital transformation initiatives in their organizations – leaders that I call Digital Trailblazers. I chose this topic as an extension to Chapter 8 of Digital Trailblazer, where I ponder the advice from boards of directors and CEOs on finding the right leaders to oversee the organization’s digital transformation initiatives.
From the discussion, we captured fifty attributes of Digital Trailblazers
that I grouped into five competencies:
- Leadership skills and mindset: How Digital Trailblazers inspire, influence, and change mindsets.
- Personal Competencies: The learned characteristics, behavioral traits, and other acumens.
- Transformation: How Digital Trailblazers manage up and collaborate with other leaders and their peers to challenge the status quo and transform the business.
- People skills: How Digital Trailblazers collaborate with teams, partners, and people.
- Digital skills: The technology, data, and other skills Digital Trailblazers use to develop solutions, select MVPs, plan initiatives, deliver releases, and transform experiences.
Once categorized, I interviewed several executive Digital Trailblazers to
weigh in on their top attributes for each competency. You can watch the
episodes on the
Driving Digital Standup’s playlist, with stellar advice from Martin Davis, Joanne Friedman, Tyler Johnson,
and Joe Puglisi.
I’ll release a white paper and dashboard on these competencies soon. Please
sign up for the
Driving Digital Newsletter, and I’ll notify you when it’s available.
Top Digital Trailblazer leadership skills and mindset
As a preview, here’s how respondents voted on the top leadership skills and
mindset of Digital Trailblazers. Each respondent was asked to select two
from the list of attributes.
When reviewing the data for all five competencies, a pattern emerged
separating attributes. I segmented the top 25% quartile and labeled it “Top”
and the bottom 25% quartile as possibly “Less Important” based on the
respondents’ selections. I labeled the middle 50% segment as “Situational,”
as they are likely attributes needed for specific culture, goals, or types
of transformation initiatives.
Digital Trailblazers are value-driven strategic thinkers
The results say that, above all leadership skills and mindset, Digital
Trailblazers are strategic thinkers and spearhead value-creation in their
organizations. They can be product managers brainstorming new
customer-facing products, services, and capabilities, architects
demonstrating how consolidating platforms leads to improved experiences and
productivity, or data scientists who connect hypotheses to analytics and
actions that improve profitability.
These are just some examples, and the takeaway is that Digital Trailblazers
are innovative, question-asking, customer-driven, and strategy drivers in
their organizations.
The situational attributes are ones that Digital Trailblazers are likely to
need at different points in planning, delivering, and driving transformation
change management. Many will have training in design thinking to conceive optimal
experiences, are servant leaders
when collaborating with agile teams, and will leverage their situational awareness skills when
presenting their big ideas to executives.
I was surprised to see teacher and transparency attributes at the bottom,
but perhaps respondents are saying these are table stakes for Digital
Trailblazers, thus making it less important to call out as a top attribute.
If you lead digital transformation initiatives, use these guidelines to
self-evaluate your mindset, skills, and behaviors. How are you delivering
value to customers, and why is your initiative strategically important? Use
the
StarCIO Vision Statement Template
if you need help in these areas.
More to come on Digital Trailblazer Competencies!
Digital Trailblazers! Join us Fridays at 11am ET for a live audio discussion on digital
transformation topics: innovation, product management, agile, DevOps,
data governance, and more!
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