If one thing is clear about digital transformation, it’s that people power drives it. But how do you inspire, empower, and cultivate these key changemakers?

Authors of “The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization Through Uncertain Times”, Dr. Gerald Kane, Boston College Professor, and Rich Nanda, US Monitor Practice Leader, Deloitte Consulting, join this episode to share their insights. Listen to hear their thoughts on what leadership and culture characteristics enable digital heroes to thrive and how to start a transformational flywheel.

Press play to hear their thoughts on…

The Advantages of Legacy Companies 

“I think traditional legacy companies have several inherent advantages. They have scale, they have supply side advantages locked in. They have long-term customer relationships to build upon. They have IP that's been developed over years. But the key is that the shelf life of those ideas isn't as long as they used to be in a world that changes so often.” 

—Rich Nanda

The Near-Term Future 

"The next three to five years are going to be among the most exciting and disruptive periods in our lifetimes. Companies who have learned to innovate and are rethinking the workplace are going to unleash new competitive capabilities. We ain't seen nothing yet, to quote the phrase."

—Gerald Kane

The Importance of Vision  

"It's a myth that technology is some kind of silver bullet. People think that, buying fancy technology, partnering with the cool tech companies, all of a sudden change is going to happen. But one of that's possible without the right purpose and vision."

—Rich Nanda

Click here to download The Digital Hero Mindset: The Traits People Need to Innovate in a Technology-Driven World

For digital heroes to thrive,

they really need to be in an

environment that is supportive

of them. Create opportunities to

find those people in your

organization. Find the people

who want to be part of this

change.

It does come back to the right

mindset, the constant

willingness to experiment and

understand how digital

innovations will impact the

company.

Earlier this year, I sat down

with Dr. Gerald Kane, professor

at Boston College, an expert in

how organizations respond to

digital change. Since then,

we've collaborated on a research

report, "Digital Hero Mindset --

The Traits People Need to

Innovate in a Technology Driven

World." The report looks at the

traits that define the people

who are the most effective at

driving digital transformation,

or as we call them, digital

heroes. On today's show, Gary

and I are joined by Rich Nanda,

principal at Deloitte Consultant

to take a deep dive into the

results of the report. We also

talk about the related findings

about digital leadership from

their new book, the

transformation myth, leading

your organization through

uncertain times. It's a wide

ranging conversation that

details why today's digital

transformation is more difficult,

why there's going to be an

explosion of innovation over the

next three to five years, and

the traits that people need to

navigate these changes

affectively. This is Daniel

Saks, Co-CEO AppDirect. It's

time to decode how to cultivate

digital heroes. Welcome to "

Decoding Digital," a podcast for

innovators looking to thrive in

the digital economy. I'm your

host, Daniel Saks, and I'll sit

down with other founders, CEOs,

and change makers to decode the

trends that are transforming the

way we work. Let's decode. Gary,

great to have you back on the

show, and Rich, so excited to

speak with you today. A lot of

exciting things happened since

we first chatted with Gary. We

co-developed a report called the "

Digital Hero Mindset -- The

Traits People Need to Innovate

in a Technology Driven World."

The collaboration provided so

many insights that we wanted to

have Gary back on the show today

to speak to the report. We're

also really grateful to have

Rich with us today who's going

to share his knowledge from his

collaboration with Gary on their

own book, "The Transformation

Myth -- Leading Your

Organization through Uncertain

Times." With that, really

excited to kick off this podcast.

Gary, one of the things that was

super interesting that we've

seen is that regardless of what

type of company you come from,

whether it's a technology

company, a legacy company, a

fast grower, really

transformational change comes

down to people. We've identified

certain characteristics of those

people that increase the

likelihood of them to be

successful. Can you share some

of the insights that you had

from interviewing digital heroes

for the report?

Absolutely. I think the first

thing to point out is for

digital heroes to thrive, they

really need to be an environment

that is supportive of them. What

we found was that there was this

recursive relationship where we

call it the flywheel in many

organizations between the

individual characteristics of

the digital heroes and the

organizational environment.

Then they feed off each other

and gain momentum. A couple of

things we found was first,

having and communicating a

vision really enabled two way

transformation, like top down

and bottom up. I'm going to

quote from Patrick Pichette,

who's the chair of Twitter, that

these digital heroes can see the

future and they believe that

this future is better. When

they can communicate that future

to the people in the

organization, people are willing

to sort of get on board and help

make this vision happen. The

second thing we found was that

curiosity of the digital heroes

really leads to a healthy level

of risk tolerance. When we talk

about curiosity -- and I was

reminded from the interview with

Helene Barnekow, who's the CEO

of Microsoft Sweden -- it's a

disciplined curiosity because

curiosity isn't enough because

our day-to-day tasks will crush

us with the things we need to do

to keep our days going. Making

sure we find time to be curious,

and what happens is, as we find

time to be curious and

organizationally curious, it

shifts our mindset from success

or failure to what can we learn

as a result of these experiments,

and as a result of this

curiosity. The growth mindset

is a theme that ties together

both the report we did and the

book we did with Rich. Third,

this passion for the mission

turns the organization into a

talent magnet. Dax Dasilva, the

CEO of Lightspeed says that

those who make the most change

are those that are driven by

passion. They make that change

because they get other people

excited about that change. That

could be positive passion, where

you see a vision and you're

excited to make that happen, or

Jim McKelvey at Square said that

can also be driven by negative

passion. I'm really upset about

something I see happening out

there and injustice in the world.

We want to work to make the

world a better place as a result.

Last but not least, we found

that of the digital

heroes creates a bias towards

action and iteration. Lee

Lestadi, for instance, said,

we're going to keep believing

there's a better way to do

something. The path isn't going

to be straight enough into the

right. It's going to be zigzag.

It's going to be hard. These

digital heroes keep at it. They

don't spend time thinking about

what next, they spend time doing

and then reflecting on what

works so they can do something

else, and that action

orientation. It's these

characteristics between the

digital hero and the

organizational environment that

they're bedded in that gets this

flying wheel of change going,

gets the momentum going that

really enables the

transformation in companies.

Rich, you work with companies

all the time that are really

trying to uncover this

transformation, I know you wrote

about it in your book. What

examples have you seen of

leaders that have driven these

characteristics to drive

transformational change?

Look, I like to characterize a

lot of what Gary was talking

about. There is a growth versus

a fixed mindset. Really

understanding that change

creates upside, innovation

creates new lanes to play in.

Leaders that bring that growth

mindset, they're going to create

experimentation. They're going

to allow for higher degrees of

risk. They're going to find that

flywheel that starts to turn.

Positivity in that creates more

opportunities and it sort of

snowballs on itself. One leader

that we spoke with as part of

the book, Rajeev Ronanki at

Anthem, he was brought in as

their chief digital officer.

This is a very traditional old

health plan company that

effectively tries to help

patients and providers connect

to each other. The information

flow about how appointment gets

done, the financial flows. It

doesn't get more legacy than

oiling the US healthcare system.

Rajeev came in and he had this

idea that they needed to be a

data and an intelligence company.

If they did that, they would be

able to provide better care to

patients, and they would be able

to match providers with great

patients, and make those

providers' life more efficient

and more profitable. Sure

enough, it paid off. Years ahead

of the pandemic, they started to

actually invest in their data,

invest in artificial

intelligence to help manage and

understand that data. When the

pandemic came, one of the first

things that happened, there was

this phenomenon where patients

that needed care, they weren't

going in to providers because of

fear of the virus of the

pandemic, and they were missing

out on really important care.

Anthem was able to use AI to go

find those patients and nudge

them to say, "Hey, you got to go

in and get this care. Here's

places you can go that are safe.

Here's telemedicine options that

are safe. It's only because

Rajeev had that vision of being

a data-driven company, and

getting ahead of that digital

transformation was that growth

mindset that was able to get

care to those patients in a very

impactful way during a difficult

time.

That's a great example. One of

the things that we found when

looking at the report around the

Digital Hero Mindset is beyond

the traits that people may have

and beyond their ability to be

really successful. There's also

organizational factors that

would influence their ability to

drive this change. Gary, what

did we find about really the

culture that can enable people

to drive this change and

ultimately become an amazing

digital hero?

The way you make this happen is

first to find the digital heroes

of your organization. I

guarantee, every organization

has people who have that growth

mindset who see that future,

that Patrick Pichette talks

about, and believes that it can

be better. It wants to be part

of an effort like that. The

first thing is create

opportunities to find those

people in your organization,

whether it's through an internal

innovation incubator, whether

it's through hackathons, whether

it's whatever format it comes,

find the people who want to be

part of this change. Then the

second thing is protect those

people from the organizations.

Jim McKelvey has something

interesting. He talked about one

organization he was working with.

He encouraged them to give their

innovators a one get-out-of-jail

free card, where I'm going to

break organizational rule for

the effort of innovation. You

get a little bit of that, not a

free pass, but the opportunity

to change things, because your

organization does want to kill

innovators. That's just every

organization is built that way.

How do you create an environment

where we can protect them?

Third is it really need to start

small. Starting small innovation

teams. Start with small groups

of people who want to make this

happen in short bursts, six- to

eight-week initiatives, to try

to move the needle in some small

way that matters for your

organization. Then the trick is

repeat. So many companies do a

six- to eight-week innovation,

do a hackathon, they pat

themselves on the back and say, "

Look at how we're innovating.

Aren't we doing great?" Those

small changes aren't going to

lead to transformation unless

they can get that flywheel going

and finding that the next set of

digital heroes who want to be a

part of that, building momentum

through those small wins and

through those successes,

publicizing them, sharing them,

celebrating them and get more

people on board to making that

happen. That's how you sort of

get that momentum going for

transformation to really happen

within their companies.

Attracting talent seems really

core to that. One of the things

we've seen in the industry as of

late is the great attrition, so

many organization losing talent

for a variety of different

reasons. Gary, what can

companies do to better attract

and retain their digital heroes?

I think we are at an

unprecedented juncture and I'm

sure we've heard the term

unprecedented a zillion times

over the last 18 months. We sort

of have a timeline of when

business will be going "back to

normal," or when that

opportunity will be. When we

published our book, we thought

that was going to be September

of 2021. Now it's looking like

it might be closer to January

2022. The exact timing doesn't

matter. We have a couple of

months to a year to decide what

we want our organizations to

look like. What level of hydrant

work, what level of in-person,

what types of tasks are

appropriate for virtual and what

types aren't. This is something

we deal with in the book. For

the organizations to take a step

back and say, what type of

working environment do they want?

More importantly, what type of

working environment do the

employees we want to attract

want to have? Because we've

seen the virtual environment has

enabled, particularly tech

companies, the ability to

attract much more diverse

talents because they're not

limited to talent on Silicon

Valley. Or an unprecedented

opportunity to strategically

think about what type of

organization you want to build

that's going to be able to

attract the type of talent you

want to get. That's going to be

appealing to the type of

customers you want to attract.

You have the opportunity now to

think through and intentionally

craft that organization without

the level of resistance that you

would have at any other time. I

hope leaders, don't just say, "

OK, we're just going to wait

until January 2022 and then life

will be back to normal. I think

that that's a real mistake. I

actually think because of these

changes, the more significant

disruptions are still in our

future. I think the next three

to five years is going to be

amongst the most exciting and

amongst the most disruptive of

any of our lifetimes as

companies who have learned to

innovate, who have developed new

capabilities are rethinking the

workplace are then unleashed

with these new competitive

capabilities. I think we

haven't seen nothing yet to

quote phrase.

We've gone through this

unprecedented disruption, so

transformation and growth

mindset and change is super

critical. Your title of the book

is the transformation myth. Rich,

what were some of the myths that

you found?

The overarching myth is that

transformation is a one and done,

it's a project, it's an event

that has a start and finish.

What we hope the readers of the

book appreciate is that

transformation is actually an

ongoing capability. It's how

innovation happens in the

company. They have to position

themselves, their mindset, their

talent for this continuous state

of transformation. That's always

been the case to some degree,

but it's especially the case in

an uncertain and fast changing

environment, which is what we

have now for decades ahead is

what I would guess. Then

there's some other myths that we

try and debunk in the book. The

first is that technology is some

kind of silver bullet, and by

buying fancy technology,

partnering with the cool tech

companies, all of a sudden

change is going to happen, and

good benefits are going to

accrue to the company. None of

that's possible without the

right purpose and vision for

where the company's going,

without the right articulation

of strategy and how technology

opens up new strategies or

fortifies existing strategies,

or without people, customers,

colleagues that are adopting and

using that technology in a

different way. That's another

myth is that it's all about the

technology. Another favorite of

mine is that digital

transformation is the CIO or the

CTO's job. This is ultimately

the CEO's job, but the whole C-

suite and their teams have to

rally around digital

transformation. There has to be

tech fluency. There has to be

an understanding that how we

grow, how we compete in a

digital world requires

technology. We can't ask one

executive in one function to own

that on behalf of the company.

Those are a few that are my

favorites from the research that

we like to talk to clients about.

It seems like risk always comes

to play. When you're a large

organization with an incumbent

brand and a lot of revenue and

an incumbent customer base,

taking the risk to drive these

transformations can sometimes be

hard for the company to embrace

and, therefore, the culture

tries to spend more time

protecting what's there versus

building for the future. What

examples of good leadership have

you seen that have balanced both

the protect the core mantra from

find the next thing that's going

to drive the transformation?

Fortunately, and Gary I'd love

your thoughts here too, we had a

bunch of good ones that we were

able to include in the book from

Fortune 500 companies to...We

had McDonalds in our book, which

is again, a very longstanding

company with a franchise

business model that has served

them very well over time.

They're looking to apply

technology into the customer

facing aspects of the

restaurants in a very different

way, and to get not only the

corporate team on board that we

have to have AI in our

restaurants. We have to have

differentiated customer

experiences. Then to get the

franchisees, a whole different

set of owners and stakeholders

on board. Yeah. That's a lot of

change and alignment that has to

happen. The stick-to-itiveness

that we learned about from the

McDonalds story was so

impressive. What they never

lost was the purpose, which is

we have to keep providing

quality experiences to guests,

regardless of the circumstances.

Our guests now are accustomed to

things like online ordering,

click and collect, getting

quality food delivered to home,

just as much as it is in the

store. That requires a

different level of customer

interaction and operational

interaction. I would look at

that McDonalds story from the

research as a pretty interesting

one.

Yeah. I have a couple of others

because I think, Dan, what was

really interesting and a silver

lining of the COVID is,

innovating sometimes was

required to protect the core

business. Nothing motivates

companies like to protect that

core. Another great example is

Marriott. Marriott experienced a

90 percent drop in demand. Their

core was shattered. What do they

do? They pivoted their entire

call center to support the state

of New York processing the

hundred X increase in

unemployment claims. They just

basically took this resource

they had and repurposed it to

solve a problem and to keep the

people employed. They could do

that because they had the

digital infrastructure to make

it happen. The last example

that I geeked out on from the

book was Hitachi Ventura. They

basically had created a factory

system by which they had sensors

in place to monitor the

production in factories. Over

the course of two weeks, they

were able to use AI to develop

new software, to then turn that

sensor network into social

distance monitoring, to monitor

the temperature of their

employees so they could get back

to work on the factory floor in

a much faster way. As you

digitally transform, it creates

what we call some digital

superpowers of scalability,

optionality, nimbleness, and

stability that really enables

these organizations to have some

new strategic capabilities that

they can leverage in the

marketplace. It's not the

technology alone, but it's about

the capabilities of the

superpowers that these

technologies enable.

One of the common themes of the

research that we've found is

that transformation is not a

technology problem. It's a

people problem. How do we

educate the next generation of

these transformative people with

a growth mindset and really

enable a broad generation of

digital heroes.

That's a great question. I think

the hope is as we create more

digitally mature organizations,

that they will be immersed in

environments where they can

begin to learn these skills. If

you are an environment that

encourages a growth mindset

rather than tries to crush it, I

think that people are going to

be able to sort of recognize

opportunities for innovation.

In our research, we asked how

you learn things and how do you

keep your skills up to date? 90

percent of people, this was pre-

pandemic, said we need to keep

our skills up-to-date at least

yearly, and 50 percent said

continually to stay relevant to

the digital world. We asked how

you did that, and training was

actually a very small portion of

that. It was more about creating

a work environment that enabled

you to develop new skills and

new capabilities and put you in

to new challenges. Rather than

sort of the steady step up the

organization where you've

climbed the ladder, we've seen

some companies move to a tour of

duty model, where employees will

spend three years in a

particular job and then move to

something else entirely within

the company to begin to round

out those skill sets, to bring a

beginner's mind and a fresh eye

to new problems. I think skills

and classes are great, but

creating a learning organization

is really what's key. That again

is starting from the top, from

the CEOs that really push this

growth mindset, but then create

an environment where that

mindset can flourish.

Especially in this kind of great

resignation era then, once you

get those people in the door and

you can attract them because you

have the growth mindset you're

going to allow for innovation,

they have to be empowered.

Suffocating those people or

frustrating them by not

empowering them to experiment

and grow, or by having

overbearing management systems

that boggling down. We're seeing

it quite a bit in this era right

now, where employees are feeling

very empowered and what has to

be something where they're

seeing the reward, the fruits of

their labor impactful and paying

off.

What I find most encouraging and

exciting about all this research

is that truly anyone can be a

digital hero and people can take

the lessons to be able to

succeed. That makes our

organization's diversity

stronger and more important and

the importance of having an

inclusive culture now much more

important. It's incredible that

we're working to a world where

people will have equal

opportunity and equal access to

what they need in order to

thrive. Therefore, it's really

on the individual to be able to

build this mindset and these

skill sets to be able to drive

transformational change. I'm

super optimistic about the

future, but maybe just in

closing, Gary, what are you

worried about 10 and 20 years

out in terms of technology's

ability to impact society?

I think we're dealing with a

couple of questions right now.

I've interviewed one CEO of a

large insurance company. I

always conclude my interviews

with, is there anything I should

have asked, but didn't? He said,

I think the thing you should've

asked, but didn't is, are we

really thinking about what the

world we want to create will

look like? It's like we've seen

digital technologies create

massive inequalities and create

a lot of problems in society.

Facebook is right now on the

chopping block for all sorts of

things. Some of it's fair and I

think some of it's not fair. I

think some more we can think

about what is the role that we

want technology to play? What

type of society do we want to

build with these technologies?

Not just sort of a race to say, "

Who can get the most money? Who

can get the most eyeballs? Who

can get the most...?" And really

get down to a small number of

winner takes all, can we take a

step back and use this

opportunity? I do think it's a

real opportunity to say, over

the next 3, 5, 10 years, as

business leaders, and as we did

the book, I was so inspired by

the leaders we spoke to and how

they were called the golden age

of corporate leadership. Because

I think we really saw corporate

leaders do some remarkable

things over the last 18 months.

Actually we had a series and the "

Wall Street Journal" profiling a

number of the people we did

interview, because we just

couldn't fit it all into the

book. That's available on my

website, and then Deloitte has a

landing page that I assume we'll

put it up there so people can

access it. It's spending the

time. What is the role we want

to create in 10 to 20 years

using these technologies? I

think we have the chance to make

those decisions now. I think if

we wait too long, if we wait the

five years, we may end up with a

world that's really cool with

shiny technologies, but not one

that's really great to live in.

As we conclude, is there

anything I should have asked but

didn't?

Look, I've really liked this

last topic on things to worry

about. I do think thinking about

responsibility and ethics. We're

in an environment right now

where we talked about purpose

around vision and why, but

purpose connected to ESG, kind

of how companies are going to be

a source for good, responsible

outcomes, ethical outcomes.

It's tough to think about the

second, third, and fourth

derivative of decisions we make

today about technology and what

might happen. That's another

discipline companies have to

really instill. I think if

Facebook knew where the third,

fourth, and fifth derivative of

the social media platform they

created, they might've made some

different decisions a few years

ago. How do we start to

forecast those derivatives of

decisions we make today? That I

think is maybe a topic for a

whole separate podcast and maybe

a book, Gary.

Hmm.

I'll take you up on that, Rich.

As always, this was an

incredible conversation, really

inspiring just to know that the

research validates that truly

anyone who wants to develop and

has these certain set of

characteristics can be a digital

hero and can make

transformational impact on their

organizations and the world.

Thanks to both of you for

joining.

Thank you, Dan. Thanks for

having us.

To learn more about the findings

from the Digital Hero Mindset

report, visit decodingdigital.

com/report. Thanks for

listening to Decoding Digital.

Make sure you never miss an

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