Digital transformation:

Engaging the organization

Vincent Feltkamp and Joris Stadhouders

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 Leaders are to engage
• Incremental change can be achieved by a small part of
the organization already, but transformation (which is
often disruptive) only through engagement of many
• Employees engagement: employees are energized to
make the vision a reality
• Creating engagement is a task of the leadership
• Next: at a global scale ... How to do that?
• Blogs, digital video, enterprise social platforms
• The same digital technology creates the engagement
• Global complexity, growth through various large
acquisitions …. decentralized models make it challenging
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 Pernod Ricard (pp 115-122)
• people talk about them on social media
• units had digital initiatives, on social media
• 1st Group level initiative: get employees to talk openly
• entrepreneurship
• innovation
• branding and marlketing
• getting org to work differently, BP improvement
• built social network within 6 months
• got 19000 employees engaged by
• 150 executives who engage
• promoting the sharing of best practices
• new HR practices with online feedback from employees
• addressing the true issues, high level ones and day to day ones
• a digital university
• next: digital champions and a co-created digital acceleration
roadmap – adopting best prectices, unit strategic initiatives
• HQ and Leadership – synergies, providing shared capabiilities
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 Social Network Use Example
Airport duty-free Absolut Vodka display
1.looks fishy to traveling P-R employees
2.they take a pic,
3.send over the P-R social network to brand enforcement
team
4.few hours: It is Fake!
5.few days: the display is eliminated
6.Brand Honor is saved!

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 All are working together

• Leadership is #1, support from the top, the top setting

the tone and being a role model
• Working together is key
• Digital champions must play the role of change agents
• Digital champions can
• encourage others to participate
• from executives to front-line workers
• keep discussions going: you need to “prime the pump”
• assume formal change roles, form a network,
• reverse-mentoring: younger digi-savvy employees mentor
digi-betic executives, who in turn know the firm
• Executives: set the tone, & remain engaged
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 Three critical managerial
levers for engagement
1. connect the organization, all can collaborate
2. encourage open conversations, to advance the vision
3. crowdsource employees to co-create solutions

Example: Large company had a meeting of 300

executives, filmed excerpts, and a broadcast into whole
organization. Real time. All got involved. At end of
meeting employees already knew outcome.

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 Crowdsourcing
The value of employees goes beyond day-to-day jobs
• IBM :internet, Harley Davidson and Telecoms: employees are
valuable customers .....
• Pernod Ricard : involve its employees
• Orange: idea for app to fight Cable theft, saves € 1M

No need to leave innovation the innovation people

• In EMC:
•competition for ideas. Employees select idea.
•Winning ideas get implemented by idea owners & CTO.
•Encourages people to come with ideas for improvement
• Open innovation: whole world can suggests ideas
•P&G : critical innovations, in products in trademarks, packaging,
engineering, services, marketing models, design:
www.pgconnectdevelop.com
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 Challenges
• Implementation is not always easy: new tools are not
easily accepted, not all are digital savvy
• New ways of working often make other work (people’s
jobs) redundant (e.g. order taking) or less important (e.g.
of functional managers) ….
• It is not just the people, their skills, attitudes, it is also the
structure in which they are working, the business
processes, the reporting lines, these also have to change
• Digital gaps – young people being more savvy with social
media and mobile, but less aware of data structures and
the integration of IT with business processes (e.g. ATOS)
• All have to participate: train, coach and pull all aboard.
• Deal with resistance (there can even be good points in it)
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 Challenges
• Deal with resistance ( listen to the good points!)
• Central data available (data warehouse) also enables
transparency and can provide information for better
decision making (better than the old local MIS)
• Systems thinking can help de-personalize conflict by
showing the structural relations

• New ways of working, new processes, new business

models will affct people, but often employees themselves
embrace the new technologies
• Engage, experiment, lead by example, focus on what is
needed to solve problems, not on technologies

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 Takeaways
• Lead to engage and energize the employees
• Use digital means themselves to engage the employees
• Connect and give a voice to all
• Hold conversations, give all a role
• Crowdsource the employees for good ideas, for co-
creations and next: accelerate the buy-in
• Address digital divides if they are there
• Think of training, and of defining new people’s roles
• Consider new processes, cutting across boundaries,
perhaps even new structures
• Deal with resistance by being open about the goals

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