Digital Marketing Training, Digital Transformation, Social Media Training
Digital Transformation: How to Transform Digital Talent
Feb 11 2021
Deloitte recently shared their top digital transformation trends for 2021 and transforming talent is among the top 7 trends.
This isn’t surprising. Most studies on digital transformation show that people are the most vital aspect to success. The people need to lead transformation. The people need to embrace transformation.
The people need to transform themselves and the organization.
Digital marketing isn’t a separate department. With over 50% of budgets in digital we are marketing in a digital world.
So how do you transform your talent?
Some think the answer lies in acquisition. Finding a few great digital experts. This can jump-start your efforts and build your internal Center of Expertise or Subject Matter Experts. But it doesn’t transform the organization.
Transformation needs to transform the knowledge, skills and mindset of the organization.
Here are 7 ways to transform your talent to successfully transform your organization.
Start by understanding the skills gap that you have in your organization. Where are your current skills? Where do they need to be for you to succeed?
A comprehensive capability assessment of your organization will help you to clearly define your current state and ideal state. This is the starting point to growing the skills and transforming the organization.
Once you know where the gaps are, start to fill them. Build a comprehensive digital training program for your organization.
This often involves digital marketing certifications, level-set digital foundation trainings and live workshops.
A skills growth training program should touch all levels of the organization for complete transformation.
One-time training isn’t enough. To evolve an organization you’ll need to have continuously grow and learn.
Digital is always changing.
You can always do better.
It is a journey.
Even the biggest digital experts in the world continue to learn, grow and educate themselves.
Plan to continue to build the skills of your organization over time.
There are a number of areas where your organization, or people in the organization will need to go deeper in their knowledge.
For example a brand manager may need a digital foundations training program, but if they are managing a website re-launch they should be prepared to dive deeper into website usability, strategy and SEO.
Brand managers may need a more comprehensive understanding of content optimization to challenge their agency.
In addition to broad skills training, provide opportunities to grow deeper knowledge.
To create a learning organization that thinks digital first, leadership needs to set the tone for the organization. This may involve specific leadership digital workshops and trainings, to get executives up-to-speed speaking the same language.
Leadership should champion digital priorities through the organization. They set the tone and should have the knowledge and skills to do so smartly.
A strong center of expertise is a powerful way to embed digital in your organization. While the entire organization should think digital, internal experts can provide guidance, direction and support.
Build centers of expertise with digital experts to facilitate digital. Many aspects of digital are technical and complex. Having experts internally can help the organization accelerate digital.
This COE approach isn’t limited to digital. When I started my career in Finance and P&G we had COEs for taxes and other technical areas. It allows the organization to benefit from expertise in technical areas.
Embedding digital champions through the organization can help grow capability in large global organizations. Digital champions are usually people in the organization with roles that aren’t digital. For example a brand manager or finance manager.
The digital champion has an unofficial role to champion and support digital. They need the skills, knowledge and leadership to drive digital.
Recognize and reward digital leadership in the organization. This shows that digital is a priority in the organization.
Create formal and informal recognition of digital excellence.
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