Evans opened the keynote by highlighting key findings from a recent Workday study that was conducted to better understand how organizations are investing in digital transformation to drive new business models, unlock digital revenue growth, and enable organizational agility.
He said that leaders in digital transformation exhibit high levels of performance across five key areas: continuous planning, fluid structures and processes, an upskilled workforce, informed decision making, and measurement and control.
The panelists shared best practices and learnings in agility from their own digital transformation journeys. Some of their key lessons are:
Start small. Jeanette Olson shared that one of Target’s key learnings was finding the right pace of innovation. To be impactful, the business needs to be able to catch up to the technology. Start small, create success, and build on that momentum over time.
Find skills. Skills are constantly evolving to keep up with the changing world of work. In particular, John Mead shared the importance of hiring people with cognitive flexibility in finance. He believes that if you can’t handle change, you’re not going to be relevant, and that the pace of change is only accelerating.
Rethink team structures. Companies should organize work around people who are most qualified for the job, not around hierarchy, according to Richard Bye. By putting people with the right set of skills on projects, companies can solve problems and adjust more quickly.