To survive in the digital era, organizations should implement strong digital strategies that drive business transformation and can attract and retain top-performing employees across all age groups. How do we know? We asked, and they told us.

See full infographic here

MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital, Deloitte Consulting LLP, surveyed more than 4,800 business executives, managers, and analysts across 27 industries and 129 countries on their views of their organizations’ digital transformation and digital maturity. The findings, detailed in the Becoming a Digitally Mature Enterprise report, revealed that employees across all generations seek to work for digitally transformed organization, and that most are dissatisfied with their organization’s digital progress to date.

Other key themes that emerged from the study include:

  • Digital strategy drives digital maturity. Only 15 percent of respondents from companies at the early stages of what the study refers to as digital maturity — in which digital has transformed processes, talent engagement and business models — say that their organizations have a clear and coherent digital strategy. Among the digitally maturing, more than 80 percent do.
  • The power of a digital transformation strategy lies in its scope and objectives. Less digitally mature organizations tend to focus on individual technologies and have strategies that are decidedly operational in focus. Digital strategies in the most mature organizations are developed with an eye on transforming the business.
  • Taking risks is becoming a cultural norm. Digitally maturing organizations are more comfortable taking risks than their less digitally mature peers. More than 50 percent of respondents from less digitally mature companies see their organization’s fear of risk as a major shortcoming.
  • The digital agenda is led from the top. Maturing organizations are nearly twice as likely as less digitally mature entities to have a single person or group leading the effort. In addition, employees in digitally maturing organizations are highly confident in their leaders’ digital fluency.
  • Stories can help gain employee buy-in and organizational traction for digital transformation. Telling digital stories creates pride in organizations. Companies need to demonstrate their ability to tell the digital story and what it means to live in the digital world for business.

 

For more insights, read Deloitte Digital and MIT Sloan Management Review’s Digital Business Study: Strategy, Not Technology, Drives Digital Transformation Becoming a Digitally Mature Enterprise.