Embracing Digital-First Culture: Transforming Organizations for the Future (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: A digital-first organization is really one where they've started to think about not just the technologies that they employ in the organization, but also how that influences the way in which work gets done and the kind of behaviors that they want people to exhibit as well in the organization so that everything that they're doing, whether it be people, behaviors, processes, or technologies, are really focused on making the best use of digital to be as good as they can be. There's a lot of characteristics that would make up a digital-first organization. Some of that relates to digital technologies that they employ, collaboration technologies, because that feeds into how the way work gets done. So if you want to build teams across global enterprise, by using collaboration tools that are available now, you can actually have teams working together 24 by 7 around the world and also being able to come together and interact with each other readily. And that means more fluid structures where people are identified more by their competencies or capabilities than where they actually sit in an organizational silo. So the optimal environment in which to operate is not just a structural one or a technological one, it's really a cultural one. Producing an environment in the sense of all of the shaping forces around people in an organization directed towards becoming digital is a really important piece of this. Digital culture is probably at the top of the list, but you also need to have forces within the business which is shaping the way in which people behave. So for example, collaboration tools. For example, different performance management systems which give you feedback on a dynamic basis, an ongoing basis. So the CMO is really at the heart of all of these changes which are coming about through the digital revolution because they've been impacted most directly right at the forefront of this whole revolution in terms of customer expectations, how the organization is projecting itself out to its brand into the outside world, and the use of analytics to help them to figure out where they can be most effective. So CMOs already are experiencing the forefront of the digital revolution and that's causing them to think back into the organization, not just about how they organize their function and the different types of capabilities they need in the marketing function. And that also starts to influence the rest of the organization then because it brings a much greater awareness of the power that these kind of capabilities like analytics can bring to the way in which they operate as well.