Building an Ultramodern Board to Lead Digital Transformation

At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, the corporate board as the top leadership team needs to become the advanced mastermind behind digital transformation, to envision, inspire, influence, and innovate, because the substances of leadership are all about vision, positive influence, and progression. More specifically, what are the characteristics of an ultramodern board to further advance the business and lead digital transformation seamlessly?



The ultramodern board are composed with BoDs, who have the advanced mindsets to think further with a clear vision and profound insight:  The corporate board plays a critical role in setting guidelines, envisioning, and overseeing business strategy. Vision is a future state of being, vision makes you feel passion about what is going to happen - the opportunities. This role affects most through collective mindsets, congruent behaviors, continuous endorsement of the change and regular communication to keep the momentum. Digital transformation is an evolutionary journey which means, a renewed understanding of the future of business; what’re the disruptive trends; how your organization catalyzes the positive and progressive changes and how much better one can do to leverage creativity and lead a seamless transformation. Change the game is a mindset. the visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future in pursuit of advancement. The digital BoDs with ultra-modern mindsets can practice open leadership, think “out-of-the-box,” can provide the direction as vision, mission, strategy, as well as leadership skills like decision-making, delegation, and monitoring.
An ultramodern board can help set an innovation climate that is sustainable and drives future growth: Digital is the age of innovation. No longer are boards sitting in a room and just voting on various policies, to focus on compliance only. They have to proactively evolving with both innovation management and management innovation. Therefore, every board should have an innovation committee or have innovation somehow weaved into its oversight responsibilities. The role of Board is to help and encourage the senior management team to set an innovation climate: So, the leadership team must create a corporate culture where innovation thrives. So the management team can gain a huge advantage for their organization if they seek and utilize innovation in equipping their organization to build and maintain multiple cultures and connect all the right dots. Digital means to break down the past and lead toward the future with quantum leap. An ultramodern board can set a clear choice among future scenarios that advocate advancement and promotes positive behaviors. Boards must continually evaluate the management team to determine if the right strategy and culture are thriving in the organization.  If the innovation represents creating a significant change to the company, this must be presented to the board.
An ultramodern board is information savvy and IT friendly: The modern society always has some connotation with the advanced technologies, which bring quality, convenience and make a significant impact on both individuals’ life as well as the organization’s operation. Information is the lifeblood and one of the most invaluable assets in modern business today, technology is often the disruptive force in digital transformation.Therefore, an ultramodern digital BoDs need to become information savvy and technology-smart. It does not necessarily mean today’s BoDs should become technology guru or IT geek, it does mean digital BoDs need to have learning agility, and their inherent nature and ability to adapt allows them to do just that, learn, adapt and provide valuable insights that truly no one else can or could see. Boards can no longer avoid, delegate or ignore the need for technology competency among their ranks. Understanding the importance of IT to the company’s business model is important for effective oversight of IT investment and technology initiatives.  An information savvy board becomes more strategic and agile to fit for the digital new normal. BoD leadership needs to be future oriented. A tech-savvy board will have the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, building trustworthiness, ensure what happens next, and lead the digital adventure with confidence.
The corporate board as an oversight and guidance role needs to be ultramodern and super-advanced, BoDs as top leadership roles need to have multi intelligent wisdom, to envision and lead the organization towards its future. The first principle of building an ultra-modern Board needs to be open-minded, foresightful, knowledgeable, innovative and committed in order to contribute to strategy oversight when required and effectively at all times.  Leadership is to innovate, not a status quo; leadership is to move forward, not backward. An ultra-modern board is built based on progressive mindsets, leadership dynamic, advanced skills, and learning agility.





Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu