Leading teams through a Digital Transformation project 

The first thing to consider is what you want to achieve with the project. Define your goals and, more importantly, stick to them throughout the project. It can be very easy to be side-tracked or get lost in specifics.

Always refer to your goals and remember why you are completing the project. These goals should have your member needs in mind – how will this digital transformation project support them?

Are you in charge of the project and who do you need involved? It can be good to establish how much say you have in the project and who needs to make the final decisions.

Try to minimise the number of stakeholders involved or you won’t get any decisions made.

Resistance often comes from a lack of understanding, fear of disruption, or concerns about learning new systems. If you are facing resistance when launching the project, make sure to explain the context for the change. Yes, go back to your goals!

Whilst it can be good to focus on the benefits, it’s also a good idea to highlight the risks of staying the same. How will the member experience be affected if you don’t change?

This leads on to understanding what support the team needs – if they are working on the project or part of the wider team and still likely to be impacted.

A common cause of people not liking or resisting change is a lack of understanding the system. Consider if the team need extra support, resources and outline potential training needs to help adoption of the new solution.

Allow your team to have their voices heard from the beginning of the project. Listen to their concerns and involve them in risk management. What could go wrong? Can we prevent it? What’s the plan if things do go wrong?

Decide what kind of project you and the team want to be involved in. Sometimes tasks call for gantt chants and a checklist. It’s important to have deadlines, but it’s also important to provide your team with the flexibility to try out different options, experiment and learn from mistakes. An agile transformation approach ensures flexibility while keeping projects on track.

Don’t forget about your needs when leading the project!

You can ask your team what they need from you to run the project and how they want to be led. Each person has their own strengths, and you should help them use these during the project.

Trust is a big part of digital transformation.

Sometimes you can inherit a project or step into a new role and want to make a change. It takes a long time to build trust, but it can very quickly be lost. Lost trust is often caused by assumptions, miscommunication or genuine mistakes.

To help with trust, it’s good to come up with a list of quick wins. This means completing something within the first couple of months to generate a bit of a buzz about the project. Sharing success and celebrating wins is important for team morale and getting support from the wider team.

If trust in a project has been lost, understand the reason why. Again, it all goes back to the goals! Emphasis why the change is needed and allow feedback from the team to help rebuild trust.