Digital first strategy: both a curse and a blessing

Digitalisation is both a challenge and a solution. It enables hybrid teamwork, simplifies and automates processes and opens up completely new business models. At the same time, it destroys traditional jobs and business sectors, demands a new corporate culture and completely new innovation cycles. But what does this mean for companies in concrete terms? How can we solve the challenges of our digital VUCA world and what do we have to do if we want to seriously digitise our organisations? The following five levers help to ensure that digitalisation is more of an opportunity than a challenge:

#1 Leaving well-trodden paths with a lot of creativity

The companies that were prepared to reinvent themselves and to make lasting changes were particularly successful in the pandemic – be it manufacturers of paper handkerchiefs that suddenly produced respirators or companies that abruptly expanded their digital marketing and sales channels. This was also the case at the Haufe Akademie, which had to question the business model of face-to-face training at the onset of the global corona pandemic and very quickly succeeded in transforming to digital knowledge transfer. The basis for this? Creativity.

Those who are able to question apparent certainties, change perspectives in the search for solutions and use digital opportunities can develop new business models and thus position their own company for the future.

#2 The future is co-creation in teams

However, the digital world of work not only requires creativity in order to keep pace with the rapidly changing framework conditions and ideally to anticipate and shape new trends. It requires a new kind of cooperation: Whereas in the past it was sufficient to assign tasks to individual employees who then worked on them efficiently, today the creativity that is so important arises primarily in a team of heterogeneous specialists. But these teams formulate their own requirements for the new working world – first and foremost a management style that creates ideal framework conditions for the teams, but leaves them enough freedom and individual responsibility to be able to develop sustainable innovations.

However, co-creation does not only take place within a company: Co-creations are also increasingly taking place with customers or partners in order to jointly develop new products or services – quickly, flexibly and closely in line with the customers’ requirements.

#3 Being unfinished is the new normal

Flexibility is one of the core concepts of digitalisation – on the one hand, digital tools offer us an enormous gain in flexibility, but on the other hand, digitalisation also requires mental agility – both from organisations and from employees. In a digital product world, there are only versions, not finished products. At the Haufe Group, for example, editors, software developers, marketeers and product developers often work together in joint teams. Departmental boundaries have been dissolved. Whoever is part of a particular project is in the team. And this approach goes far beyond actual job profiles. Developments are by definition never over, because when customer needs and market requirements change, the organisation has to adapt and teams have to come together anew: Living in permanent beta.

Being unfinished and trying out new things is a constant challenge for companies and employees, also because it is often only in retrospect that it becomes clear which steps were successful. If you don’t give employees the space to find their way in these frequently changing teams and if you don’t take them along with you on this journey, you lose an enormous amount of potential.

#4 New knowledge is more in demand than ever and lifelong learning is the standard

Digital communication tools, new programming languages or automated, machine learning processes – in a digital, networked world, knowledge is the most valuable asset. The same applies to knowledge as to any other valuable asset: we never have enough of it. People and organisations always have to learn new things so that they can react permanently to changing market conditions and customer needs.

But how people obtain information and acquire new knowledge is also changing in the digitalised world: employees inform themselves independently, flexibly and context-dependently and use interactive, hybrid learning offers as well as asynchronous formats such as YouTube videos and podcasts. With the knowledge they acquire, they learn to manage their daily work independently and to take on more responsibility for tasks and processes.

#5 Digital mindshift at all levels

If you digitise, you change the organisation, because digitisation is a cultural and not a purely technical issue. For example, various departments at the Haufe Group work with OKR (Objectives & Key Results). OKR is a management method to synchronise the goals of a company with those of teams and employees. Working with this method shows the strengths of the teams and brings the weaknesses ruthlessly to light. The framework works if managers live it and apply the same standards to themselves as they do to the team. Those who engage with it gain an honest and authentic view of the organisation that can shake up long-established thought patterns.

Conclusion: It all comes down to people

The example of the OKR method shows why it is so important for companies to have a digital corporate culture in addition to an optimal digital infrastructure. In this culture, managers and employees live together openly and creatively, in which they inspire each other, exchange knowledge and work on new solutions, ideas and innovations. In this process, hierarchies that have so far manifested themselves in the corporate pyramid can also dissolve. But even if digital tools will have a decisive impact on the future of work, the five levers clearly show that in the end it is still the people who live and significantly shape change.

What would a hybrid work model like the one used by the Haufe Group be without the people who help shape it? Therefore, it was clear from the outset that the responsibility for the best form of collaboration should be located where it belongs – in the individual teams. Teams make decisions, they make the difference and generate success. To achieve this, companies not only have to change their structures and rethink their management style. Technical and social framework conditions must be created in which teams can freely exploit their abilities and potential. Only in this way can people become truly effective and companies flexible and adaptable.

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