Financieele Dagblad – Digital Transformation Requires Culture Change First

There is still a large gap between digital strategy and practice, with companies continually struggling to fully implement digital transformation due to lack of organizational support and cultural change.

These insights and more were gleaned from an event discussing the findings of a recent study from Financieele Dagblad and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Ghent, Belgium. Without the necessary changes, companies are leaving valuable customer data on the table, and employees lack the agility required for problem-solving in the digital age. Digitization goes hand in hand with agile work. The goal of data analysts is to create an innovative organization that responds effectively to customer needs. Unfortunately, CIOs and other data leaders do not feel supported by their colleagues, including boards of directors. And regularly, CDOs step down because their initiatives are not supported by management. Consultants observe CEOs who declare a digital revolution, but do nothing to organizational culture. Before Egon Zehnder’s Natascha van Boetzelaer does a search for a new CDO, she always first discusses the internal culture, saying, “If the CEO struggles with that, it’s bad news.”

Full story: “We zouden agile gaan werken, maar ik zie het nog niet” (“We would be working agile, but I do not see it yet”) in FD.nl (24 June 2017).