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Digital transformation has been proven crucial for all industries and key to their competitive, financial and operational excellence. Yet, Eaton’s recent research in The intersection of digitalization and the energy transition revealed that only half of the companies polled are currently executing a digital strategy.
Why are companies holding back on this necessary step forward? The research revealed two key inhibitors: staff who lack digital training and limited organizational bandwidth for digital technology adoption.
While it’s known that digital transformation is primarily driven by technology, our research reflected a truth many leaders have borne out firsthand: our people will ultimately determine if we succeed or fail. Implementing new tools, technologies and digital processes alone won’t make for a successful digital transformation. But pairing these with change management, technology training and a plan for ensuring a fundamental change in the mindset required for enterprise-wide digital transformation ─ including an understanding of the core skills needed and the resources to do so ─ will.
Digital transformation leaders must first take the time to assess the learning capacity of their organization across all its functions. Consider the business models, functional expertise and the current state of digital skills that currently exist in your organization. Then identify the skills that need to be acquired for change and develop clear plans for upskilling, outsourcing or hiring new talent to fill the gaps.
Digital transformation cannot be led by one function or team or take place in silos across an organization. It’s therefore crucial to establish a digital mindset across teams to help employees acquire the skills needed to be involved in the change.
At Eaton, we are cultivating a digital mindset by identifying core skills that, when understood and practiced together, give employees the foundation to address, ideate and develop solutions for both internal and external customer pain points. Encouraging employees to gain awareness-level knowledge of these skills also allows everyone to speak the same digital language and work collectively to make an impact on business strategy.
At Eaton, data analytics, design thinking, lean principles, agile processes, risk-taking and emerging technologies are considered the six core skills crucial to driving our digital transformation and enabling a digital mindset inside our organization:
Once leaders have a clear view of the learning capacity of your organization and have established both plans for addressing gaps and a digital mindset, the final step is to develop learning opportunities that are tailored to various employee roles.
This begins with offering tiered learning plans that run the gamut from awareness-level knowledge to comprehensive education and skills training. By ensuring a curated learning track is made available to employees, and augmenting this base with practical experience and coaching, employees are much better equipped to understand what they need to succeed in their role and influence change.
With digital transformation comes a new and great responsibility for employers. This expanded responsibility is anchored by a commitment to helping employees establish a digital mindset. It is this thinking that allows them to see beyond new tools and technologies as the basis of digital transformation, and to embrace the knowledge they need to meet the digital demands of today and tomorrow.
Learn more about Eaton’s digital transformation.
Aravind Yarlagadda is executive vice president and chief digital officer for Eaton, a global power management company. Prior to joining Eaton, Aravind was most recently executive vice president and general manager, Outcomes Business of Itron, a market−leading company delivering IoT solutions for the utilities and cities industry segments. Throughout his career, Aravind has served in a number of leadership roles including senior vice president, Industry Business for Schneider Electric; vice president, Products, Invensys Operations Management Business for Invensys PLC; and chief technology officer and senior vice president, Product Development for Tyco Industrial Solutions. Aravind currently holds key consultative roles with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Society of Automation (ISA) and Smart City Forum. He is also a consulting staff member for the Energy Storage Association (ESA) and the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME). Aravind has previously served as a board member for Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) and IoT World. He holds an MBA from University of California, Berkeley, a master's degree in computer science from Texas A&M University, and a bachelor's degree in engineering, electronics and instrumentation from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.
