Digital leadership skills that South African leaders need for successful digital transformation

Abstract

Digital transformation is occurring all around us and leaders need the right skills to lead in this disruptive age, or face having their organisation being replaced by more dynamic and adaptive competitors. South African leaders and organisations are considered laggards in digital transformation. The purpose of this research is to understand the digital leadership skills, the type of leader required to carry out successful digital transformation, by investigating those leaders that have carried out digital transformation successfully in their organisations, and how they acquire and maintain these skills. The research approach took the form of a qualitative, exploratory research design that involved 17 face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviews across 9 different industries. The participants interviewed included CIOs, Managing Directors of IT, CDOs, Directors of Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Officers, Heads of Digital, Heads of IT, and a Head of HR, all of whom are directly involved in the decision making and execution of digital transformation in their organisations. The research aimed to determine if adaptive leadership, based on the Complexity Leadership Theory was relevant for a disruptive digital transformation environment, and if the key traditional leadership skills from the Skills Strataplex i.e. cognitive skills, business skills, influencing/interpersonal skills, and strategic skills were relevant for successful digital transformation. The results from the study indicated that adaptive leadership is relevant and that all four key traditional skills were equally required; however, additional skills namely entrepreneurial skills/mind-set, having a challenger mind-set, and meta-cognitive skills were also required. The key digital leadership skills identified as necessary include an understanding of technology, a leader’s ability to learn from failure, resilience and the ability to stand up for one’s beliefs, and the ability to collaborate. These skills, together with the kind of leadership required, would impact the people and the cultures that were emphasised by the study as being key components to successful digital transformation, and have resulted in the creation of the Adaptive Digital Leadership Skills Model. The findings from this study contribute to the extant literature in the field of digital leadership skills.