Reinventing business wheels through digital leadership

By Reuben Orinda

The dynamic landscape in digital technology has precipitated a drastic paradigm shift, and transformed the way people communicate, learn and work in various spheres of operations, more so in organisations that have been forced, either overtly or covertly, to adapt to new business realities.

Most business leaders and executives now believe that the only option available for their businesses to stay afloat is to “go digital”, a phrase coined in the digital realm to denote that one fully understands how one’s audience uses technology to access what they need “just under the wire”. This is important because by going digital, there are significant benefits, including improved real-time interaction with customers, partners and others; accurate insights, and, most of all, increased productivity in the business.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to embrace and perfect digital leadership in an organisation. For starters, digital leadership has various definitions.

Firstly, it is the strategic use of an organisation’s available digital tools to effectively achieve its goals and objectives. Secondly, and here we quote Tom Loosemore, it is the art of “applying the culture, practices, processes and technologies of the internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations”.

An effective digital leader should therefore be fully aware of the company’s business goals, and prioritise the areas that require digital intervention. He/she should be conscious of how new technologies can be harvested to help the business be more receptive to the changing dynamics. This can be achieved through galvanising all the digital assets and tools in the company’s repertoire, and effectively utilise them to secure a safe bet in the business’ competitive advantage.

More so, creativity and innovation should be the twin attributes of good digital leadership for, by placing value on them, the company will be able to effectively harness the emerging technologies whilst perfecting them, and even creating a company’s own to be deployed to help its business and other planned projects.

However, the major driver to digital leadership is digital information for, without it, any digital application would not be complete. Digital information, which is the “use of new, fast and frequently changing digital technology that is available to solve an organisation’s problems”, is important because on the whole, it helps an organisation to create workflow and business processes that allow these new technologies, products and services to be rolled out quickly while also ensuring that any conventional application and IT operations are being maintained.

Granted, digital information provides digital tools that boosts not only business productivity but also fast-tracks revenue increase because fast, effective and on-time performance leads to customer increase and loyalty, hence raking in more money in a business.

According to Deloitte, 42 percent of major companies now believe that it’s increasingly important to develop digital skills in a leader and that success in this digital age heavily depends on those skills.

Additionally, a research by Harvard Business Review on 1,000 CEO’s showed that 90 percent believe that their business is being disrupted on reinvented by digital business models. However, 70 percent admit that they do not possess the requisite skills, leader or operating structure to adapt digital leadership.

Indeed, if leaders have digital understanding, they can make confident, informed and effective decisions for their organisations and users.

Reuben Orinda is an entrepreneur, tech enthusiast, portfolio manager and digital innovator based in Dar es Salaam