Why do SMEs resist Digital Adoption and how to overcome it?

Posted on 12 October 202414 October 2024 by admin_kingston

There is a common theme of small and medium-sized businesses being reluctant to the idea of digitising their business processes and infrastructure especially if they have physical products.

But little did they know what they were actually uncomfortable with is their leadership mindsets that were not conducive to change and innovation. The survey conducted by Deloitte in 2016 highlights the reasons that only 44% of business leaders prepare for such disruption despite 87% of businesses knowing they are going to get the hit of digital disruption at some point yet no action gets taken. A self-induced catastrophe!

Some of the common barriers to digital adoptions are as following:

Resistance to Change

This resistance to change is reflected in all levels of an organisation such as IT department where a lack of digital processes slows down the entire workflow, leading to slower delivery of secured projects, and lesser capacity to take on new ones.

Digitally maturing companies stay ahead of the growth curve and their workforce by actively engaging in risk-taking agile collaborations, partnerships and projects. Statistics showed agile organisations achieve 30% higher profitability and 37% faster growth than non-agile businesses.

This can be achieved if the benefits of the digitised process are effectively communicated to the company hand in hand with continuous training to foster culture where innovation is valued and change is not considered a huge discomfort.

IT capacity

IT performance can easily be jeopardised if the right training is not provided to IT leaders which effectively leads to a tunnel vision towards both short-term tasks and long-term goals.

So if IT team leaders are provided adequate training and investments are made in the overall IT structure, this can help make the business scalable, resilient and flexible.

Investment in continuous Training and Education

Digital adoption training and learning opportunities for senior-level management is a key factor that further translates into creating and fostering an overall company’s culture. Therefore, it is crucial for senior management to keep their knowledge in check and look out for training focusing on future skills, digital adaptability.

In our 2^nd Module of Digital Adoption of Help to Grow Management Programme, we peel the concept and practical frameworks of Digital Adoption such as the role of digital leadership, stages of digital adoption and recognising where your business is at and many more. The session will be conducted by our Expert Speaker, Eugene Fisher.

About the Speaker:

As a transformation consultant and product manager Eugene has worked with C-suite leaders in start-ups to Fortune 50s drive growth by enhancing leadership capabilities, building innovative teams and launching new products.

He takes a pragmatic and design-led approach to delivering growth; a few recent projects include testing new business propositions for a convenience foods chain with 1.2k locations, helping a new team generate £10m of business value within one year of formation, and developing the enterprise strategy for a £1b retailer.

You can find out more about the programme here: Small Business Leadership & Management Certificate Training Courses UK (kingstonuniversitybusinesstraining.com)

“Both/and Thinking – Using innovative thinking to solve toughest business problems

Posted on 31 July 20241 August 2024 by admin_kingston

Being a business leader, imagine you’re faced with a tough decision at work and you need your innovative thinking hats on. Should you focus on short-term profits or long-term growth? Traditionally, you might feel pressured to choose one over the other. But what if there was a way to do both?

In a recent podcast on Harvard Business Review, the co-authors of book Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis discussed how a shift in thinking can solve complex problems.

They said, entering “both/and thinking,” is a refreshing approach to problem-solving. It’s like being asked to choose between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, and realising you can have a swirl of both.

This method isn’t about compromise or finding a middle ground. Instead, it’s about embracing the tension between opposing ideas and using that creative friction to spark innovative solutions. It’s like being a tightrope walker, constantly adjusting to maintain balance while moving forward.

Think about the challenges of hybrid work. Instead of fixating on finding the perfect mix of office and remote days, both/and thinking encourages us to dig deeper. What do we value most about each environment? How can we blend these elements to create something even better?

They further discussed, both/and thinking approach isn’t just for boardrooms. It can transform how we handle personal dilemmas too. Wendy shares how it’s improved her parenting discussions with her husband. Instead of butting heads over different approaches, they’ve learned to pause, listen, and combine their perspectives for more creative solutions.

Leaders like Paul Polman at Unilever have used both/and thinking to great effect. He’d challenge his team to find more tension in their proposals, believing that discomfort often leads to breakthrough ideas. It’s like purposely adding a dash of spice to a recipe to elevate the flavour.

Other leaders get creative with metaphors to explain the concept. Terri Kelly at WL Gore compared balancing global and local needs to breathing – you need both inhaling and exhaling to survive. Zita Cobb on Fogo Island used a cauliflower to illustrate how local communities can maintain their uniqueness while still being connected to the global stem.

Now, both/and thinking isn’t a magic wand. It requires practice and can feel uncomfortable at first. It’s not about finding perfect “win-win” solutions every time. More often, it’s a constant dance of balancing different viewpoints.

But by embracing this approach, we open ourselves up to a world of possibilities we might have otherwise missed. It’s about seeing the forest and the trees, having your cake and eating it too. In a world that often pushes us to choose sides, both/and thinking reminds us that sometimes, the best path forward is the one that brings opposing ideas together.

Learn more about Innovative thinking and strategies in the first module of Help to Grow Management Programme at Kingston University. www.kingstonuniversitybusinesstraining.com

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Leading by changing the rules of the games

Posted on 12 June 202412 June 2024 by admin_kingston

In the quest to create new wealth, world top businesses have applied unconventional strategies and innovative approaches. This would not have been possible without questioning the existing business strategy frameworks and radically changing the basis of their competition in their industries.

But what motivates a leadership team to get on a strategic transformation in the first place?

For some businesses, it is a threat from a disruptive competitor or environment such as Covid-19 and sometimes, businesses get on the bandwagon of global megatrends – one of those roadblocks when you are forced into a certain direction to survive.

However, strategic thinking and systematic planning for the future are perhaps one of the most imperative driving forces for wealthy companies why they introduce a core business to disruptive transformations while paving a path for new growth. It is surely an uncomfortable place for a business and its people to be in but it is also the most fertile.

In order to better understand the transformations and the derivatives behind them, the Innosight research team came up with a methodology to evaluate strategic change efforts. In their research, they aimed towards the best practices across industries instead of being blindfolded by the metrics such as market value, revenue, or subjective and generic assessments such as ‘most innovative’. They name 3 methodologies to determine the legitimacy of innovation and transformation a business has achieved.

The first of them is New growth. Investigating quantifiable growth and questioning, has the business achieved measurable success at creating new products, services, markets and new business models? Using their primary metric which is the percentages of revenue outside the core, they look at the percent of revenue that falls out of their existing core growth areas.

Second of that is Repositioning the core. As the title suggests, it is to investigate whether the transformation reflecting from what the numbers has come from the applied change or is it still stinking old? An important question, how effectively the company transformed its old and core into a disrupted and new.

Lastly, Financials. If the numbers are not proposing the new growth, we may have a problem there in the long run if not the short. Has the return rate been reflected in the new areas? What is their market performance? Have losses been recovered? Is it on a slow growth to revive the business? How are their new products or services performing on their balance sheet?

What questions are you asking?