7 steps to becoming a digital organisation

How do you move your organisation from slightly digital to very digital?

Nesta peeps learning the way of the digital ninja

Creating ninjas

Here at Nesta we’re in the middle of helping our people transform themselves into an elite group of digital ninjas.

The idea is to get better at sharing what we’re learning, and disseminating it on our new website. We’re also interested in putting our people front and centre of the experience, as they’re some of the best at what they do, and they deserve more credit.

Together we’re better

I took part recently in a great event hosted by Together We’re Better – a network of digital not-for-profit leaders who come together to share their thoughts and challenges.

Together we came up with 7 ways to help organisations move from slightly digital organisations, to ones that are digital first.

7 steps to digital success

Here are the 7 ways we crowd-sourced to help our organisations go digital by default.

1. Make the Head of HR your new best friend
   Catch them while they’re young. All new recruits to your organisation have no idea what the culture is. If you work with your Head of HR to build in some basic digital literacy expectations into all job descriptions, you’re already setting the scene for a new culture.
2. Move like a crab – go sideways and use lots of pincer movements
   Going digital is rarely a massive shove, it’s more a million small nudges. So move sideways through the organisation, sounding people out, getting their advice, finding out what drives them, seeing what they want. And then when you’ve sown enough seeds, get buy-in from the top, and mobilise your advocates from the bottom. It’ll be a classic pincer movement – just a very slow one.
3. Set a clear vision and show the evidence, then circulate it so everyone knows where they’re heading
   No one’s going to do what you say unless you demonstrate how it can impact on them and the work they’re doing. You also need to set some crystal clear goals so everyone know where they’re all heading.
4. Work with managers to put digital outputs into everyone’s objectives
   HR is first base – second base, third base and home runs are all about managers and directors getting on board and building in concrete objectives into their people’s work. If producing blogs is not part of their job, it’s unlikely to get done.
5. Elect digital champions (and hand out special badges)
   This is an oldie, but it’s tried and tested. Having powerful advocates for the change you want to see dotted around the organisation really does help. As long as you’ve sold your vision to them coherently, this is a great way to keep the dream alive.
6. Don’t do training – do way of life
   One-off training is great, but it won’t change people’s behaviour. For that you need a structural change in how everyone works. That means doing all of the above, and most importantly to…
7. Keep showing the value of what everyone’s doing.
   This is really important. Unless people can see the benefit of the effort they’re putting in, they’re unlikely to continue. Give them access to Google Analytics, post regular stat updates in the kitchen. Show them the impact of what they’re doing, give them ownership of it, and they’ll keep doing it.

These are just a small selection of ways, but I’m currently trying them out at Nesta and they seem to be working (so far).

But, like always, different organisations need different tactics, and I’m lucky at Nesta that I’ve got such a talented and forward-looking group of people to work with to make this happen.

These are definitely just the tip of the iceberg, so if you know of any other tips or strategies that you’ve used to encourage an organisation to go more digital, let me know.