A Digital Mindset
Insights for leaders navigating a digital world.
Welcome to Leading Digital - a three minute read designed to help you ask better questions, make smarter tech decisions, and lead with confidence in today's digital environment.
A digital mindset
Today we're talking about mindset. You're already across what an enormous impact the mindset of a leader has on the team - I'm sure you can think of the good, the bad and the ugly that you've seen in the past!
So what kind of mindset should we bring to digital leadership? There are two qualities that are critical for success; curiosity and adaptability. Most organisations handle technology on a project basis. You scope a need, choose a tool, implement it, and move on. Others layer on system lifecycle management - tracking updates, costs, and risks.
But if you want to get real value from technology, you need something more. You need to shift from a set-and-forget approach to asking "is it as good as it can be today?".
Most modern organisations rely heavily on Software as a Service (SaaS) tools. New features roll out constantly and the organisations that unlock the most value are learning, adapting, and evolving how they use those tools are used over time.
Take Canva, for example. I use it almost every day, but if I was still using it the way I did when I first signed up, I’d be missing out on half its power. The same applies to the tools your organisation uses every day. The real value comes comes from how your people keep using and evolving with tools over time. That might look like slow shift in process over time, or complete recreation of processes as new technologies streamline them.
The mindset shift starts with leadership. When leaders model curiosity, adaptability, and alignment between tech and business goals, teams follow. Keep reading for some quick questions you can ask to make sure you're getting the most out of technology for your teams.
Leaders have been asking...
Asking great questions is a leadership skill you already have. Here's some tech questions you can ask your team to maximise tech ROI and model curious leadership.
When you want to encourage the team to safely share ideas: "What’s one digital tool we use that you think we could be getting more out of?"
When you're considering whether to upgrade to a new system: "Before we look for something new, have we gone back to first principles on mapping our business process to the features this system has?"
When your teams need to take on a new business process: "How can we support this with our existing tech systems? Are there parts of this process we could streamline for the team?"
Some of these questions take a little time to investigate, but it's often a case of slowing down to speed up. Business processes change over time just as much as software features do, but we rarely go back to mapping the two out together. You might be surprised how much time you can save!
Take action!
This fortnight, choose one process your team does all the time, like onboarding a new client or managing approvals. Sit down with the team and ask: “Could our existing tools support this better?” Spend 30 minutes together exploring what’s possible and capture one small improvement to test this month.
It's a small step, but you're signalling to the team that you care about saving them time and that it's okay to suggest tech and process improvements.
Last fortnight one leader let me know they really resonated with avoiding phrases like "laymans terms" and accepting that you deserve a clear explanation. If something in this edition sparked a thought, I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below or send me a message. I'll be back in a fortnight with more on digital leadership.
Scarlett
