Tiffany St James is one of the UK’s most experienced digital transformation specialists, the founder of Transmute and former Head of Public Participation for the UK Government. She is also NDA’s monthly columnist.
If you are leading a digital transformation programme in-house what resources can you lean into externally from people who have been there and done that?
Coaches tend to ask you the right questions to help you determine your powerful answers and whilst that is a good discipline, coaches know and understand that your answers are the best ones, sometimes you need to stand on the shoulders of people who have led programmes before and glean their knowledge too.
Mentoring takes many forms but sometimes it’s informal, or it looks at your entire career path and helpful connections that drive you forward but not lifting the Pandora’s Box of your digital change programme and exactly how you should approach it with tacit knowledge.
Who can you then turn to?
I call this discipline Digital Stewardship. It’s more than coaching and mentoring combined. It is a partnership, someone working alongside you with experience of digital transformation delivery who is working with you to help you keep you on the rails.
Management consultants may deliver this, but they tend to want to work out your tasks and hand you a process to deliver it.
Coaches are good at this as long as they have the industry experience to back it up.
So what should you look for in a digital steward?
Experience in more than one programme
What worked in British Steel may not work for you. You need support from someone who has ideally delivered transformational change in a few different industries, not just one, and not just your industry. They’d have not only a track record of success but also real-world practical knowledge.
A strategic thinker with tactical know-how
It’s no good having just a strategist lead your project, they must have rolled up their sleeves and delivered programmes and learned first hadn what works and what does not work.
Good doctrine with flexible systems
There is not a transformational change system or process that fits all businesses. You will not want someone who on day one arrives with their process and tries to fit your complex business into their model. Not a fixed programme of how to deliver something that is implemented by someone junior.
Alternatively, you do not want a person or team that turns up with no preparation or previous practice, it needs to be a balanced approach. A careful dance between processes that work and how that fits here. You’ll need processes with differing levels of maturity and differing levels of authority vs collaborative working decision-making depending on your culture.
Curiosity and connected digital knowledge
It’s important that they have a solid grasp of established and emerging technologies across Cloud, Automation and AI as well as the implications for business and that they have a range of resources to continually update themselves on trends and insights in new developments. That’s likely to be an inherent curiosity as well as being well connected in industry. Not all of the innovations are published and some come from the emerging idea of peers leading in their field and their access to them.
Someone who leaves their ego at the door
You should not be looking for people who are looking to make a name for themselves, their role is to help you shine, not put themselves on an awards pedestal.
Good working chemistry
You’ll be working in partnership so it is important that you have chemistry with your digital steward. You don’t need to be best friends, you should respect them and have good working chemistry.
Mentoring and coaching abilities
They will need to switch between asking probing questions that enable you to reflect and sharing a range of experiences about what good practice looks like. A mentoring-like approach to connecting you with the right additional support, public platforms, networks and extra-curricular environments that will further your knowledge.
Change management, communications and storytelling
Being a solid practitioner needs to be married with the ability to bring people in the business along with you. Despite having formal Change Management and Change Communications leads your Digital Steward will need a good working understanding and practice of these disciplines too.
Overall you will only know what skills you possess and what skills from a Digital Steward would help you and your digital programme to flourish.
