Infographic: Addressing the digital culture challenge

Is company culture a roadblock or a catalyst for digital transformation? Does the big moment for an organisation arrive when they have embraced the fact that the prerequisite to digital transformation isn’t a technical issue, but a cultural change?

These are just two of the questions answered in a report – The Digital Culture Challenge: Closing the Employee-Leadership Gap – published by Capgemini Consulting.

Distributed in an attempt to understand why organisations are struggling with their digital transformation efforts and what they can do about it, Capgemini undertook an extensive research program based on a clear definition of digital culture within corporates. It surveyed 1,700 people — including not only senior executives, but also managers and employees — in 340 organizations across eight countries and five sectors. It also interviewed senior business executives from a range of organisations across industries, as well as academic experts.

Understanding the challenge

One question the report asks is what is at the heart of companies’ struggles with digital culture? Drawing on discussions with executives and academics for the research, four  consistent obstacles to digital transformation became evident:

1. The leadership neglects, underestimates or misunderstands the importance of culture in their digital transformation planning.
2. The existing culture and way of doing things is so deeply ingrained that it becomes very difficult to effect change.
3. Like customers, employees too are becoming more digital. They see first-hand when leadership lacks digital literacy and this can create a disconnect that hampers the development of digital culture
4. Most behavioral change initiatives accomplish little because employees are not empowered to take on new challenges, they are not compensated for learning new expertise, and they are not incentivized to break new ground and build new models.

The findings from the report, which can be downloaded in full here, have been summarized in this handy infographic, which makes for interesting reading (click to enlarge).