Digital transformation is about talent, not technology (Guo Dewei)

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AuthorAndy Kwokis a senior founding member of the Data Literacy Association and OpenCertHub Founder and CEO, writes columns for EJTech

When it comes to digital transformation, I believe most people will immediately think of the improvement of internal enterprise systems and technologies, or technology-related issues such as databases. However, modern enterprises have to invest a lot of new technologies and system transformation to achieve digital transformation; but in fact, the core of transformation is not just focusing on technology itself, the human factor plays a pivotal role in the entire transformation process.

Due to work needs, I often have the opportunity to meet with different corporate executives to discuss the digital transformation of their companies. During the meeting, I usually ask three questions: First, does your company have a clear digital policy to lead employees and how to improve the ability to use data to achieve the company’s business goals; second, are there suitable tools and solutions at the technology application level to cooperate with the transformation? Generally speaking, most companies have clear answers to these two questions. Some companies even proudly emphasize that they have invested a lot of resources (especially funds) to build new systems and analysis tools for employees to use, or even connect cross-departmental databases to accelerate the practice of internal data-driven decision-making; as for the third question, I will ask the other party how much resources are invested in employee retraining and building data literacy compared to investing in technology innovation projects. Unfortunately, most companies have not paid attention to this part of the development or even ignored related considerations. Don’t forget that no matter how good the system is, it still needs to be effectively used by colleagues in various departments to produce business value.

Harvard Business Review has published many articles on digital transformation of enterprises in the past. One of the articles that impressed me the most was about the failure of digital transformation due to ignoring the human factor. For enterprises to successfully achieve digitalization, the first thing to do is to inspire and cultivate employees’ digital thinking, rather than simply introducing new technologies. I will share two of the points with you:

Put people first

Technology always means doing more with less resources, but only when technology is combined with the right human skills will this combination generate value. When business leaders consider investing in technology, they should first consider investing in people who can make the technology work, and through training (reskill and upskill) to discover talented people to keep up with the pace of enterprise transformation.

Focus on soft skills

Just as digital transformation involves people rather than technology, the key technical skills are mainly soft skills rather than hard skills. Since no one knows what the key hard skills of the future will be, the talent development concept is to combine the dual focus of soft skill potential and hard skill knowledge, so the best deployment is to invest resources in talents who are most likely to develop these soft skills.

Generally speaking, among soft skills, the change in mindset can produce the biggest change. For example, by building a personal data mindset, one can effectively improve the ability to use data for communication, thinking and execution, which helps to support the digital transformation journey of the enterprise.

Digital transformation is a continuous journey of transformation and reform, with the goal of improving the overall competitiveness of the enterprise. This depends on the active participation and unremitting efforts of all employees. New systems and technologies alone are far from enough. The most important thing is to enable every employee to embrace digitalization, actively optimize work processes and improve work efficiency. Therefore, when enterprises are undergoing digital transformation, they should first focus on human factors such as the cultivation of employees’ digital skills, the shaping of data culture, and the digital thinking of management, so as to lay the foundation for subsequent technology improvement and application. In this way, the digital transformation of enterprises can go more steadily and further.