Lead A High-Performing Digital Team

Digital business is still growing in importance. Forrester’s Digital Business Strategy Survey, 2024, highlights that the percentage of organizations stating that their digital strategy and/or initiatives have a major impact on their growth, or are the primary driver of their growth, has grown from 55% to 61% between 2023 and 2024. Of all digital initiatives, digital product and service innovation is the top priority, and a single vision of the future to create a strategy and roadmap is seen as critical when it comes to developing and implementing a successful digital strategy.

This is where the digital team comes in. Digital teams are primarily tasked with designing, delivering, and managing digital products or services, launching digital innovations, and developing the digital roadmap. The CTO, CIO, and CDO are all closely involved in setting the digital strategy, but the chief digital officer is often responsible for executing the digital strategy. How do you, as a digital business leader, navigate these dynamics and build a high-performing digital team? You need to:

  • Establish the skills priorities and skills gaps that your organization has. Not all digital skills are relevant for your organization’s strategy and objectives. Our Digital Competency Map helps you assess your key skills gaps by taking into account your existing and required skills. It does so across six competencies: experience design, agile development and operations, emerging technologies, data science, change management, and product management.
  • Pick the right strategy to plug any skills gaps. Many organizations face three main talent challenges: The digital skills among their workforce are scarce, digital skills are constantly evolving, and there are few external candidates with the right digital skills (or the candidates are too expensive or in the wrong location). The four options to overcome digital skills gaps are to recruit talent externally, retrain existing employees, work with external service providers that have the required talent, and/or embrace automation.
  • Become and remain an attractive employer to acquire and retain digital talent. To advance your digital maturity, you need to focus on recruiting and retaining your own digital talent. Despite the economic uncertainties in many economies, employees with scarce skills are still in high demand. The employer brand and the employee value proposition (EVP) both play a pivotal role in your talent strategy and must be aligned. Both influence a candidate’s decision to join — and stay — with an organization. Moreover, EVP and employer brand directly affect employee engagement, a prerequisite for driving better customer experiences.
  • Choose the most appropriate digital org model that fits your needs. Organizations undergoing digital transformation are looking for org structures and models that deliver shorter time to value, better business alignment, and greater customer obsession. As a result, more organizations are exploring cross-functional and platform org models to break down silos and align teams to either channels, customer journeys, or products. In these more dynamic org structures, clear accountabilities and responsibilities must be clearly outlined.

Forrester Decisions for Digital Business & Strategy empowers digital leaders to succeed in their vision and mission. Within this service, the research, tools, and frameworks in the Grow The Digital Team priority help digital business leaders build a high-performing digital team. Read the various reports and reach out to us to tackle your digital-team-building initiative with discipline and precision.

If you’re thinking about building and strengthening your digital team — and are a Forrester client — you can download the vision report here: Lead A High-Performing Digital Team. And if you’d like to discuss this topic further, please reach out through an inquiry or guidance session.

source

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *