Sumi Vivek is a customer-focused executive with 26 years of experience driving technology-led transformation across consumer products, retail, and manufacturing sectors. She has held key leadership roles as CIO at Diageo, Chief Digital Officer at Tata Electronics, and Executive Director at IBM excelling in IT strategy, digital transformation, and process optimization. Passionate about diversity, she champions “Women in Technology” and has a track record of building high-performing teams that achieve sustained competitive advantage.
In a thought-provoking conversation with Women Entrepreneurs Review Magazine, Sumi shares her insights on overcoming resistance to digital transformation, the role of diverse leadership in innovation within technology, and unconventional methods to identify and cultivate future leaders in digital transformation.
With digital transformation initiatives often facing resistance within organizations, what unique strategies can leaders implement to foster a culture of change and drive employee engagement in these efforts?
The first step for a successful digital transformation is to align and prioritize on a set of key initiatives that the leadership team should drive personally. They must articulate the vision behind the change and demonstrate personal commitment by adopting new technologies themselves. When executing complex and large changes, I have always leveraged a change champion network constituting of strong influencers in the organization across locations, levels and functions who can spread the word grounds-up. Enabling them through the process not only made the initiative successful but also established a shared purpose. Finally, regular feedback collection and celebrating both successes and failures builds trust in the organisation.
Leaders should also align digital transformation with employee well-being, showing how new tools can enhance work-life balance and productivity. This can motivate the teams to embrace the initiative and make it successful.
Given your role as a diversity and inclusion ambassador, how do you see diverse leadership teams influencing the innovation process in technology driven industries?
Many of the organizations struggle with diversity existing only at lower and middle levels and decision leadership teams being devoid of it. On the other hand, some organization that I have worked for make a systematic attempt and ensure diversity across levels and on various dimensions. While it’s tough to achieve, it’s a powerful driver for innovation by bringing in unique perspectives and enabling creative problem solving. It also fosters a culture of innovation by challenging the conventional thinking, leading to more balanced and effective decision making.
Additionally, diversity in leadership provides the space for the rest of the employees to recognize their individual strength and feel empowered to share ideas and collaborate.
What are some unconventional methods that can effectively identify and cultivate future leaders in technology and digital transformation within organisations?
While identifying future leaders, I keep in mind the need for skills of today’s intelligence age viz. adaptability, high emotional intelligence, collaboration in problem solving, humility, effective communicate skills etc.
Some of the alternative approaches that I have used to uncover hidden potential and nurture leadership are:
Looking for new age skills - Technology is ever changing, so the specific technical skills that a person has are not very important. So rather than focusing on specific expertise, I look for an ability to learn and evolve, to be able to lead in uncertain times and for resilience in difficult circumstances.
Observing informal leadership in action –I believe corporate jobs are team sports. So, the key is to look for those who naturally influence others, foster collaboration, or are consistently sought out for advice and guidance—regardless of their job title.
Peer to peer leadership evaluation - Team members evaluating each other’s leadership potential in a structured way is a good way to get more nuanced insights into individuals’ interpersonal skills, influence, and collaborative abilities than top-down evaluations.
Creating a “failure first” environment - In a culture where it’s safe to fail, you can easily observe who takes accountability, learns from mistakes, and adjusts their approach. Leaders are often distinguished by their ability to navigate failure and motivate others to persist.
While building the talent, I ensure that along with giving them broad and deep exposure to all areas of business, I also help them build an outside perspective so they benchmark with the latest and greatest and aspire for the absolute best.
In summary, building future leaders in technology and digital transformation requires adapting to the changing context of the intelligence age and balancing the strengths of internal and external talent. By providing broad experiences and encouraging a redefinition of success will help internal candidates thrive and lead successfully.
What metrics or frameworks can companies utilize to effectively measure and communicate the business impact of digital transformation?
It’s important to effectively measure and communicate the impact of digital transformation initiatives. While it is a critical activity in the process of building sponsorship for these initiatives, it remains a challenge. We can use quantitative measures such as revenue growth, cost savings, employee productivity, customer lifetime value etc. or other qualitative measures or in case of foundational elements metrics like adoption rates, stage gate milestone achievement etc.. In addition to this, its most important to keep the business objective in mind and hence identify which of the above metrics are primary KPIs and which ones are secondary/ support parameters.
Whatever method is used, it’s important to establish this before the project start, reflect on these while taking critical decisions on the project and monitor after go live. A continuous reporting of adoption rates and impact for a substantial period of time post go live will build trust in user community and subsequently a strong momentum for digital transformation.
