Mike Perk on the importance of creating a vision, building an innovation micro-hub in your organisation, investing in upskilling staff and showing true leadership, all in a digital context
Mike Perk on the importance of creating a vision, building an innovation micro-hub in your organisation, investing in upskilling staff and showing true leadership, all in a digital context
It’s a hard fact to accept, but the reason why so many companies fail at digital transformation is due to their employees and leadership.

Mike Perk, who runs a digital transformation advisory agency says that people are naturally change-averse, and need to be taken on a four-step journey before they will embrace digital enhancements in your company.

 

Perk highlights four key areas businesses should focus on:

Create a vision: As a leader, you need to give your staff a reason to believe by helping them see how digital transformation could improve their work lives.

Establish innovation micro-hubs within your company: Find people who are passionate about digital transformation and let them work together in hubs. To encourage innovation, it’s important not to apply the same restrictive corporate rules to these hubs that should be allowed to fail as they search for the right solution.

Invest in upskilling staff: Perk explains that you can’t just send staff on a course and expect them to change how they work or use new systems. Businesses should give their innovation hubs a decent budget to experiment with and should invest in sustained, continuous training for staff.

Be a digital leader: The traditional hierarchical structures breed excellent managers who run and maintain the status quo, but very few true leaders who challenge it. To be a digital leader, you have to lead by example and show your staff how they can adapt to using new technology without feeling threatened by it.

Mike Perk at Investec Business Matters
Mike Perk, Managing Director, WWC

In today's world, being able to adapt and having a fitness for change becomes absolutely critical.

About the author

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Ingrid Booth

Lead digital content producer

Ingrid Booth is a consumer magazine journalist who made the successful transition to corporate PR and back into digital publishing. As part of Investec's Brand Centre digital content team, her role entails coordinating and producing multi-media content from across the Group for Investec's publishing platform, Focus.

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