Digital Leadership is the important part of businesses at both individual and organizational levels. In Simple words, digital leadership is defined as strategically using a business’s digital assets to achieve goals.
It includes social media, websites, digital marketing, and other digital channels. A digital leader is responsible for keeping updated with the latest social media trends and implementing these trends to the company’s digital platforms.
Table of Contents
Digital Leadership At the Individual Level:
Typically, at the individual level, the CTO (Chief Information Officer) is responsible for providing leadership by leveraging the company’s digital resources. These assets can be emails, social media, and other electronic documents of the company.
The responsibility of digital leadership can be handed over to other persons with different job titles. The job title of the digital leader is not crucial; they understand their company’s objectives and the strategies required to attain them.
Digital Leadership At the Organizational Level
At an organizational level, most companies emphasizing digital leadership aim to expand their digital resources and employ them to explore diverse avenues for outsourcing external and internal projects, introducing new services, and enhancing organizational efficiency.
With the help of digital leadership, an organization can manage new services, products, projects, and clients at an optimal level
Responsibility Of a Digital Leader
A digital leader’s role involves ensuring the quality and functionality of the company’s digital assets under their purview. The operational approach of a digital leader aligns with that of roles such as a Human Resource Manager, Chief Operating Officer, or Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
They are responsible for providing quality from all assets to those who show interest or ask any query. A digital leader is doing something on which every other person in the C-suite depends. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) can only perform their tasks with reliable digital information.
The effectiveness of the Human Resource Manager (HR) depends on their ability to receive applications with appropriate validation in their hiring system and assess candidates’ skill sets relevant to the job. Chief Operating Officers (COOS) can only run their tasks if they get reliable information from the system.
The organization can run better if the information is authentic, reliable, and updated. And these are all the responsibilities of a Digital leader.
Digital Leadership and CIO
Imagine the first conversation between a CEO and his executive team about what to do with these cutting-edge devices known as PCs to get a sense. Chief information officer (CIO) is a title that works well for an executive in charge of digital leadership.
But over the past 35 to 40 years, the phrase “CIO” has come to mean “a box and wire jockey” — someone who merely get boxes and wires replaces computers, and overview servers. Emerging IT roles for digital businesses include the Chief Data Officer (CDO), Chief Trust Officer, Data Management Executive, and Information Governance Officer.
Benefits Of Bringing Digital Leadership In Business Culture
Using Digital Technologies In a Strategic Way to give direction to an organization. It’s all about bringing innovation and growth by using digital tools. There are several benefits of bringing digital leadership to a business. Let’s discuss each one by one.
- Digital Work Culture
- Strategic Vision with Digital Leadership
- Enhancement in Productivity
- Increase Customer Engagement & Satisfaction
Digital Working Culture
Digital Leadership will help you to work using digital tools and technologies. It will build a digital ecosystem in your organization and allow you and the whole organization to work more effectively and efficiently.
Strategic Vision With Digital Leadership:
Having a strategic vision can boost your organization’s growth to 100x, and digital leadership can help make the strategic vision for your organization. It will help the organizations how they can use technologies and digital tools to achieve their goals. It will also help to stick all the employees working together in the same direction.
Enhancement In Productivity:
Digital Leadership enhances the productivity of the employees in the organization by using digital tools and technology. Many workloads can be automated by using digital tools and technologies so that they can focus on the more critical work and utilize their time to execute those tasks. Also, it is beneficial to communicate within an organization.
Increase Customer Engagement:
Digital Tools can be used effectively to enhance customer experience. It is crucial for an organization to set up digital tools with a digital leader’s help to get more customer satisfaction and positive reviews
Real-Life Examples Of Digital Leaders:
Digital leadership is prevalent throughout economies in various parts of the world and is not exclusive to any industry. A past instance involves the South Asian maritime sector and goes back more than 20 years. Electronic purchase order generation using computers was still in its infancy.
To function as key hubs for importing commodities and facilitating international trade, countries such as Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore faced intense competition. These nations eventually recognized the need to collaborate and establish a strong leadership presence to prevent European and American interests from surpassing them.
Nearly seven years before the United States implemented the first national electronic commerce (e-commerce) legislation, South Korea did so in 1994.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)
What are the main elements of digital leadership?
Digital Leadership has various elements such as critical thinking, Interconnected thinking, employee orientation, appreciation, adaptability, and agility, digital competence, clear communication, and the capacity to independently develop novel ideas and work toward a common goal
Why is digital leadership needed?
Effective digital strategy results for firms depend on digital leadership. Less than 10% of executives in a research study of 4,394 worldwide leaders firmly agreed that their leadership have the abilities to flourish in a digital economy.
Conclusion
Digital leadership is the application of digital technologies to value creation, strategy development, and performance management. It combines innovation, business savvy, and digital literacy. Digitally aware leaders can use technology to expand their business potential, increase operational effectiveness, and enhance customer engagement.
In a recent IBM survey, individuals in digital leadership positions are significantly more inclined than their peers to believe that their organizations are proficient at creating new growth opportunities. Furthermore, they are more than twice as inclined to assert that their organizations excel in enhancing operational efficiency and promoting customer engagement.
Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have a significant opportunity to redefine their roles within organizations and progress in adopting digital leadership responsibilities instead of regressing. CIOs have access to the data and technology required to take responsibility for delivering digital value across the organization.
Useful article ! appreciate the depth of research and thoughtful analysis.