An interesting article from MIT.

The article points out 

"Businesses are transforming, the nature of work is changing, and workforce values are evolving. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything."

A recent survey by 4,000 business executives said

"Only 9% of survey respondents felt their leaders had sufficient skills to be able to lead in the digital economy."

Doug Ready from MIT says

“You can’t just mull around forever and create a 30-year plan.  Leaders need to be able to get a bead on what’s going on pretty quickly, and then also be able to empower their people and equip them so they can flourish and do their jobs.”

Carol Cohen from Cognizant says

“Your long-term success is not just determined by what you achieve alone.  But also by how you empower, engage, support, and elevate your colleagues and teams in the ecosystem around you.”

The research then went onto look at  leadership mindsets, weak spots, and four recommendations to help leaders and their organizations embrace a successful strategy for the digital economy.

The researchers found that leaders who cultivated these signature mindsets were more likely to turn their companies into talent magnets.

“Top-flight talent in the digital economy crave this kind of work environment,” Ready said. “They aspire to work with colleagues who are part of a community of leaders who are customer-obsessed, digitally savvy, purpose-driven, relationship-minded, and joyfully resilient.” 

We know our business needs to be digital and we know our team(s) need digital skills, but where do we start?

Here at DLA Ignite, we provide a one day strategy session, which breaks down as follows

1. We share, how the world has changed via a zoom (or teams) session and the sort of answers our clients have come up with.  This is about inspiring and getting the team up-to-speed in matters of a digital nature.

2. Next we run an online questionnaire, where people plot the "as is" position within your business.

3. We then run a brainstorming session, where we take you through the "as is" position, plot out a "to be" digital business environment and then the blockers that will stop you getting there.  The blockers can be people, processes or technology based.

The business then gets a documented strategy on how they can move forward with digital, it is this that a business can use to have digital leadership within your business.   

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling?  Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind” 

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.