How to handle digitalization is an overwhelming question, since it does not offer specific approaches to action. On one side, the potential of many employees remains unexploited, digital forerunners find themselves limited and forced to slow down. On the other side, digital newcomers do not get enough attention which leaves them feeling left alone. To lead digital transformation, executives need a nuanced approach to their employees' potential as well as their needs.
The Digital Transformation Personas pool different behavioural patterns, needs and potentialities. They offer specific approaches to action, which take into account the employees' expectations towards digital transformation. We developed the Digital Transformation Personas in cooperation with our scientific partner. They are based on empirical data and being improved continuously.
Using the tools around the Digital Transformation Personas, employees can be supported in areas where they can best use and develop their potential. Each persona comes with specific recommendations for action and scenarios for personal development. This enables executives and HR to respond to different digitalization types and to purposefully lead the digital transformation.
The Digital Transformation Personas describe six different groups of employees, all facing the challenge of the digital transformation. Each of the six prototypical Digital Transformation Personas contains a cluster of personalities with similar behavioural patterns. Those employees clustered together in a persona show similarities in their decision making, their use of technologies and methods, their preferences when it comes to communication, their motivation and their attitude towards change. These types are widely independent of age, gender, education and other typical demographic factors.
None of these personas is better or worse than the other. Instead, the personas reflect the differing needs and expectations persons can have and how differing methods are needed to guide each employee through their development as part of digitalization.
The use of personas helps to step out of one's own perspective and to respond to the fact that people need different leadership and development offers. By using prototypes, personas make decisions and design tasks less complex and can contribute to creating a good experience for the respective target group.
Especially for executives and HR managers the personas can serve to better understand their employees' needs and expectations, to identify suitable further education and learning measures, and to develop specific offers to fully exploit existing potential and support digital transformation.
Are you interested in our Digital Transformation Personas? Download a sneak peak about the Personas and get a feeling for Aman, the Volatile, and Lydia, the Critic.
DownloadWhat (de)motivates a forerunner of digital transformation? What’s on the mind of a digital latecomer? How can the strenghts of digital newcomers be utilised? All six personas come with detailed descriptions that offer starting points for organising digital change in a way that has everyody go along. The descriptions span from needs and expectations to strengths and weaknesses to potential paths of development.
A qualified assessement can capture moods and direct quotes from staff. Focus groups offer an excellent way to identify opportunities for action and to help plan your next steps while including the needs and expectations of employees. We offer a concept for focus groups that can, by using personas, provide precise answers to the question: What do employees need to become co-creators of the digital change?
A quantitative assessment via questionnaire provides the opportunity to perfectly align your own digitalization strategy with the reality of your company. A questionnaire study provides answers that can also take into account subtle differences between departments and teams. Previous qualitative findings, e.g. from conducted focus groups, can thus be validated. The results allow for company-wide or departmental control of digitalization.
The employees receive impulses and concrete ideas on how they can develop individually to successfully meet the challenges of the digital transformation. Aiding this process are the reflections on one's own persona and the development of a personal Learning Journey.
Workshops for executives show how Digital Transformation Personas can be used in the management of their employees. To place one's own team, to derive insights for individual leadership and to adjust the formats and measures one is using to specific target groups, helps executives to lead the digital transformation.
Leading the digital transformation means offering perspectives to your employees. With tools such as the Learning Journeys, you can draw on a pool that provides suitable measures and development opportunities for all types of personas. An assessment tool enables executives to gain a quick overview of the personas represented in their own team and a comparison of self-assessment and external assessments enables employees to shape their own further development.
Miriam Meckel, editor WirtschaftsWoche
Image: Wolf Heider-Sawall
Janik Kühn is senior consultant and expert on diversity. In the digital as in the analogue. It takes trust to engage in new things. That’s why Janik unerringly keeps his eyes on the next step on the journey towards a digital future, to take everybody along.
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