in this article by ZDnet they talk about the top 5 skills you need for digital transformation, here are my top 5 skills.

1. Digital fluency

"First and foremost, employees need to possess a basic level of digital fluency in order to successfully implement digital transformation."  Depending on the industry, digital fluency is the ability to use social media, externally and and internally.  Internally is the use of Slack, Teams, etc for collaboration and sharing information as people get used to moving away from email and using direct messaging, which has been known to increase efficiency in business.

Employees also need to be proficient at using social media externally.  Regardless of if they work in sales, human resources (HR), procurement, Finance, customer service, etc, they need to be able to "walk digital corridor and have digital conversations".  We know our employees, future employees, prospects and customers are on social media, we need to meet them, where they feel comfortable. 

"This necessity of this skill is company-wide; Harvard Business School Professor Tsedel Neeley points out that digital fluency adheres to a basic tenet of linguistics. "I often reference the 30% rule; borrowed from the study of languages, when applied to digital fluency, it dictates that the entire company needs to be, at least, at a 30% fluency baseline in order to move in a new digital direction effectively."

Of course, the necessity of digital fluency only increases at executive levels. The impetus lies with company leaders to possess and encourage digital fluency. Leaders who are digitally literate will be better equipped to address the gap between executives and employees – be it regarding perception of digital changes or simply the reality of data architecture caliber – which so often contributes to the failure of digital transformation."

2. Digital Leadership 

In the past we got employees to come into the office so we could check they are working, now we need to be able to lead "through screens". 

"It has been noted multiple times that the largest barrier to digital transformation is company culture. Company culture can heavily impact employees' perception of change, and an unresponsive culture can result in the expenditure of millions of dollars to achieve a transformation that will be circumvented."

3. Digital marketing

"There's no point in streamlining company processes and creating an improved product via digital transformation if the ultimate product is unable to effectively reach its consumer base. Marketing skills are essential in engaging your customer base and ensuring a product's financial success. Today, marketing is dominantly digital."  You must... 

1.  Transfer your marketing budget to digital, so moving away from events and conferences and investing as we know that the results from such events are declining.  

2. Move away from a reliance on email, whether that is newsletters or using it to try and start conversations.  With a 97% failure rate, this isn't one we really can be presenting to the board as a key go-to-market.

4. Digital sales empowerment

It's critical more than ever to empower the sales team to be able to have digital conversations, walk digital corridors.  In the past sales people could go to a clients office and "pop-in" and see people.  Now they need to be able to do this digitally.  This is about knowing social, how to use it in a modern way.

5. Digital dominance - owning the market narrative 

By being the leading technical and commercial influencer in your market or sector.  In the old days we would want to have an article in the local trade magazine, now we can create this ourselves by using livestreaming.  By being the technical commercial influencer in our sector we set the narrative of the market.  We are the sector anchor and the agenda and our competition then have to call to our tune. 

By doing these 4 simple things, this will give you the pipeline you need, increase your win rate, give you competitive advantage and increase your market share.


"Remember, digital transformation is a process that is extensive, expensive and all-encompassing – so, it will require strong leadership presence and investment to implement."