Making Digital Transformation a Core Competency in 2024

Every two or three years, the business world changes, and leaders are required to evaluate strategies and realign priorities. Between 2017 and 2019, the primary driver of digital transformation was growth. From 2020 to 2022, the pandemic and the shift to hybrid work significantly accelerated the pace of digital transformation. In 2023, we saw the beginnings of generative AI-driven transformation. Heading into 2024, digital transformation will need to become a core competency, according to a blog post by TechTarget.

Elevating digital transformation efforts into a core competency is a major business objective requiring a strong commitment from top leadership. Practices associated with digital transformation — design thinking, agile program management, DevOps, continuous improvement, innovation, change management, automation, and data-driven approaches — will need to be integrated across the organization. There are, however, three major challenges to creating digital transformation competencies:

1. Overcoming cultural barriers, such as resistance to agile teams, innovation, and experimentation. CIOs and Legal Operations professionals must engage a wide, diverse group of employees, leaders, and stakeholders and manage employee resistance by investing in training, establishing program charters, and assigning transformation and change management experts.
2. Creating the environment, governance, data access, and tools to enable smarter and faster decision-making. This requires promoting proactive governance programs, educating employees on using generative AI, documenting decision-making to empower employees to make informed decisions, and ensuring that security, regulation, and compliance factors are well understood.
3. Lack of experience and talent shortages pose execution bottlenecks. CIOs and Legal Operations professionals must attract top talent with multiple recruiting tactics and invest in retaining high performers. By keeping things simple, there’s a greater likelihood that more people can pursue solutions without the need for the most advanced technology skills. Leaders should simplify requirements, explore configurable SaaS solutions, leverage no-code and low-code platforms, and partner with experts and service providers.