Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders. A Practical Guide for Companies Engaged in Digital Transformation

Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders is intended to help you become a more successful digital leader—and maybe a better person (more about this at the end).

We know you are thinking, I am not the CEO, or even the Chief Digital Officer, I just work in the ranks of my organization, so how can this book help me? Due to a set of existential threats, like the global pandemic, all businesses are frantically trying to remake themselves into being digital businesses. Digital transformation is taking the world by storm—and everyone in the organization is, or will be, touched by it.

We first studied the phenomenon of digital transformation through an extensive survey of global organizations. Called the Patterns of Digitization, the survey examined every aspect of how digital transformation is implemented. We looked at over 500 companies' business strategies, resource allocation, design practices, and looked at their “softer” side, like how the leaders actually communicate with employees. What we learned from this is—that no matter what type and size company you are, you fall into two different camps. Organizations are either "Digitally Developing" (the far majority), or they are "Digitally Mature". Through this analysis, we learned something else very important—Digitally Mature organizations are managed differently. Their leaders "align human & financial resources with the strategy", "create a collaborative, and nimble development environment", "promote open & transparent communication", and initiate other important activities.

At the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation, we presented Digital Leadership: Character and Competency differentiates Digitally Mature Organizations Leaders. Through it we show how the character and competency of these leaders (the foundations of trust) help set them and their organizations apart. Our intention was not to laud Digitally Mature leaders, as it was to help lagging companies grasp what is truly involved in implementing a digital transformation and what they need to do to catch up. This has been our "modus operandi" from the beginning.

But just exhorting digital leaders to show more character and demonstrate their competency with digital technologies, is still not enough. To really help them (read you) we needed to go deeper. The jewel of this book is its in-depth interviews with proven, successful digital leaders. And we didn’t stop with just exploring their character and competency, we asked them "how specifically" they build trust through their intentions, integrity, capabilities and results. Of course, these are the “four core values” of Stephen M.R. Covey's Speed of Trust framework and the basis of the book’s 20-question Interview Guide.

Now, enjoy the book and see for yourselves how these leaders rely on these very humancentric actions—along with the trust and respect of their people—to lead very aggressive and very complex digital transformations.

Paul Mugge has 35 years' experience in product development, global business strategy, and business innovation services at IBM and 15 years of researching & teaching innovation as the Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Management at NC State University.
Haroon Abbu is Senior Vice President of Digital Technology & Data Analytics at Bell & Howell with more than 20 years' experience in leading technology-enabled business transformation.
Gerhard Gudergan is the deputy managing director at FIR Institute for Industrial Management at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.