How To Become A Digital Leader

Enterprise & Cloud How To Become A Digital Leader Gil Press Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about technology, entrepreneurs and innovation. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 6, 2022, 09:00am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In Digital Trailblazer : Essential Lessons to Jumpstart Transformation and Accelerate Your Technology Leadership, Isaac Sacolick recounts his trials and triumphs during nearly thirty years of technology development and leadership, serving as CIO in different industries and as CTO for a number of startups. Digital trailblazers at work getty Readers of this well-written book get two for the price of one: a detailed behind-the-scenes look at specific situations common to all businesses adopting, absorbing, and adjusting to new digital tools and processes; and over fifty practical lessons, tactics, and strategies for becoming a digital trailblazer, either as an executive or an enterprise. Through personal anecdotes, Sacolick successfully flashes out the do’s and don’ts of many aspects of digital transformation, delivering an excellent guide for navigating the push and pull, the challenges and opportunities of business and technology innovations and innovators.

It is written, says Sacolick, for “anyone looking to advance their technology leadership skills in this new normal of nonstop transformation. ” By cultivating more digital trailblazers in their ranks, Sacolick argues, enterprises will see the accelerated benefits they expect from digital transformation. It’s a great distillation of what it means to be or to become digital—it’s all about the people involved, not only which technology to adopt or only about which business strategy to peruse.

It all starts with people, says Sacolick, “people who take the initiative, leave their comfort zones behind, and drive transformation. ” Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, we heard from Nick Carr that “ IT Doesn’t Matter . ” Technology vendors’ aggressive sales tactics and business executives’ fear of “getting disrupted,” led to a widespread acceptance in 2003 of Carr’s argument that information technology has become a “commodity” and as such, no longer conferred a competitive advantage on the businesses investing in it.

MORE FOR YOU AI Startup Navina Leverages Amazon Web Services To Improve Patient Care In response, Bob Metcalfe, the inventor to the Ethernet, wrote that “there is an unsung player in our marvelous innovation machine: the aggressive users of information technology. ” Being “aggressive” or a “trailblazer” does not mean blindly investing in new technologies. As Metcalfe wrote, “taking technology risks, when done well, can bring competitive advantage.

When done poorly, it can bring disaster. ” Not responding to Carr but on the same wavelength as Metcalfe, Andrew McAfee documented in 2004 the strange case of Spain’s Inditex and its Zara clothing retail chain—while being a very successful business, it did not use leading-edge IT. McAfee wrote that despite the “limitations” of its IT, Inditex “has built an extraordinarily well-performing value chain that is by far the most responsive in the industry… Inditex’s experience demonstrates that it is possible to masterfully select, adopt and leverage IT while spending very little on it.

” How come? What made the difference were Zara’s digital trailblazers that understood what IT really means for the business, even when it is quite ancient IT: it provides them with real-time data on their customers’ changing tastes and preferences which they can turn in a timely fashion into new products, way ahead of their competitors. And that relentless focus on data has become what all successful businesses have invested in over the last twenty years. By the early 2000s, IT became DT, for “Data Tsunami.

” By the early 2000s, IT became DT, for “Digital Transformation,” the evolution of data from a by-product of computer calculations to the foundation of business change. And today, digital tools and the data they produce is at the core of almost all work activities, whether the work is done in a business enterprise, or a government agency, or a healthcare organization. “Aspiring Digital Trailblazers,” says Sacolick, “are drivers – people who want to lead their businesses to tomorrow’s business models, differentiating customer experiences, and data-driven practices.

Digital Trailblazers are continuous learners, have agile mindsets, and seek to make long-lasting impacts. ” If you aspire to become a digital trailblazer, Sacolick’s book is a great place to start this exciting journey. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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