Digital Leadership - Leveraging The Uniqueness Of Digital

Human Capital interacted with HR professionals from various domains to gather an understanding on the impact of 'Digital' in the realm of leadership, and the role to be adapted by leaders of today in the wake of a perennial shift in the technology landscape as also the enhanced presence of a techsavvy and younger workforce in today's organisations.

- Shruti Chadha And S. Ajay Kumar

Being a leader in the digital age means understanding technology as much as leaders understand money, HR, operations, business and law. Given the rapid changes in the way people communicate and organise their lives, leaders and organisations need to adapt to digital technologies in order to become data driven, and thereby inspire teams to engage in rapid experimentation that drives transformation and business outcomes.

What are the key skills needed by a leader to establish productive digital processes and technologies?

ANIL KUMAR MISRA: We are in the digital age where technology is changing at a fabulous rate. During such times, it has become important for leaders to keep pace with this change or become irrelevant. For leaders, it is either evolve or evaporate! New age leaders need to be digital savvy. In my opinion, leaders have to play the role of a digital evangelist. To start with, leaders must possess five key things for setting up productive digital processes.

They must answer which technology to adopt and why

They must have a vision and a roadmap to adopt it

They must experiment and should not be afraid of failures

They must act as digital evangelists

They should always put the interest of human capital ahead of everything

Leaders must realise that a company does not become digital merely because it has digital technologies at its disposal. If we look at successful organisations, they thrive in a digital environment. Digital processes can function as enablers, but the success is dependent on the people who adopt and accept it.