SURVEY: Digital Leadership Playbook Still Work in Progress

In manufacturing’s new digital era, the requirements for leadership are evolving just as rapidly as the technology that is underpinning the change.

Ask any manufacturing professional with a few years (or maybe a few decades) under their career belt: “When you think of the best boss you ever had, what made them great?”

Chances are those answers will be timeless and still consistent with what would make a great boss now: “They treated everyone fairly.” “They helped me understand how to do my job better.” “They were honest and had integrity.” “They were able to bring out the best in everyone.”

While those soft skills are enduring, the requirements of digital manufacturing have added many layers to what’s necessary for good leadership, as many respondents said in the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s new survey on Digital Leadership and Workforce. Understanding the business and its markets are still a must, but now it’s necessary to understand how technology can elevate performance. Strategic thinking is still essential, but that strategy often hinges on a digital transformation roadmap.

On top of it all, there isn’t much precedent – today’s leaders are often writing the playbook as they go. The disruptions of the past several years have also put those leadership skills to the test, as leaders are more likely tasked with managing teams across multiple locations, now including virtual ones. Organizations are shifting and remaking themselves with different structures and fewer siloes. The bottom line: resorting to the way things have always been done is something that just will not do.

What Does Leadership Mean Today?

Most respondents said that digital leadership comes down to three things: promoting and nurturing manufacturing’s innovation and adaptability in strategies and processes (47%); understanding what it means to integrate operational digital technology (55%); and, most importantly, establishing a fact-based, information-driven culture for making decisions (59%) (Chart 1). Boiled down to its basic essence, the vast majority of respondents (87%) agree that digital operations and business models require a different approach and set of skills among leadership (Chart 3).

Beyond how leadership is defined, survey respondents noted that there is also a list of new skills that leaders must acquire. At the top of the list is an understanding of the potential of new technologies and the knowledge of how to apply them (56%). But almost nearly as important is being able to act as a technology evangelist for the rest of the organization to guide actions and attitudes – making a digital/data-driven approach engrained within company culture (54%), while also promoting company structures that are more collaborative and less hierarchical (47%) (Chart 2).

Survey development was led by the MLC editorial team and the MLC’s Board of Governors.