Find your path to the digital summit

There are two main reasons why companies fail: one, management doesn’t make the right decisions at the right time, and two, external factors cause so much upheaval that business as usual is no longer an option. In today’s fast paced and unpredictable economy, that external factor is digitalization, and it’s behind 34% of company crises. Management needs to react with a strategy that is just as radical, and they need to ask the right questions. Do you know the rules of the digital game? Do you have a clear idea of the direction in which you want to move? It’s time for Plan D, and the “D” stands for “digital”.

Two thirds of companies in the EU rate their own digital maturity at a low to moderate level, making it no surprise that this is the principle cause of corporate crises. Digitalization has been a known factor for some time, and responsible executives have already laid out roadmaps for the transition. The problem is that many have set their sights far too low. Management may be asking appropriate questions: Are we cultivating the right knowledge? Are we finding—and capturing the imagination of—the right people? Are we mobilizing the right resources? The problem starts when silo mentalities are too entrenched, leaving both short and long-term cross-departmental goals unclear at best, and completely absent at worst.

• If you want to take bold entrepreneurial actions, you need a clear picture of what lies ahead for your company. In this publication, we offer a guide to a radically digital approach: map out your ideal future scenario exclusively from the perspective of the customer. Not only will this quickly expose the limitations of ingrained “rules”, freeing up your company’s thinking to enter “base camp”—the first step in our ambitious mountain climbing metaphor for achieving digital leadership—but it also sets a precedent for the taboo-breaking thinking that will be necessary to reach each milestone you set on the way to the summit, even if it’s by another route than planned. This reveals one of the most important questions for managers to ask today: is this really a detour, or is it actually the fastest way to the top?