Internal Politics and Digital Initiatives: Q&A from MITSloan Webinar

My webinar “Don’t Let politics Block Your Digital Initiatives” triggered high interest and lots of questions. I’m writing a series of posts in response to the questions I did not have the time to answer during the event: “So many questions, so little time!”

I suggest you first check out the slides I used in order to understand the context for the questions in this series. Or you can listen to the webinar ($).

Here are six of the questions with my response:

Overcoming challenges

Q1: What in your opinion is the biggest political challenge in digital transformation?

J: Fear.

Q2: On what level of the organization do you see most of the internal politics happen?

J: Territorial Challenges

Q3: How do you improve situations where BU managers or others posture alignment for digital platforms to upper management but are not really invested?

J: Walk the talk at the top.

Q4: What is the difference between a normal change management and digital initiatives?

J: Digital changes your vision of the world.

Q5: How would you know that politics are being managed well enough not to impact the success of the program, apart from just measuring the digital transformation KPIs?

J: Stories beat numbers.

Q6: What are your views on dealing with senior execs who downplay digital? How can you create a change that goes in the right direction?

J: Bring the outside in.