Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how it creates and delivers value to customers while realizing internal operational benefits. And yet, only one in three digital transformations succeed.

Where many organizations and leaders fail is in the implementation. The strategy could be rock-solid, but without a mindset shift that ensures the organization and its people are evolving at the same rate — bought in and committed to being part of the solution — execution often just fizzles out. Obviously, this is a serious problem for companies hoping to thrive in the fast-changing era leading up to 2030.

As “The Digital Leadership Specialists,” Robin Speculand and I surveyed 2,138 leaders across four continents and 18 countries. Our research paper “The Digital Leadership Perspective 2024” identified a significant gap between the perceptions of the board/senior leaders and the rest of the organization regarding digital transformation progress. We call this “digital detachment.”

Despite the unfortunate prevalence of digital detachment, digital transformation has created successes and efficiencies for many organizations. Our research found that:

• Many organizations are on the right track. There is progress in digital transformation in organizations around the world.

• More leaders are digitally confident. Almost two out of three of the leaders we interviewed said they believe they can guide their organization through its digital transformation.

• New measures are being adopted. Leaders recognize the importance of creating measures to precisely track digital transformation value.

For others, digital detachment is an issue, alongside three other factors:

1. Senior leaders tend to overestimate the state of their organization’s transformation.

2. Many leaders are not starting and ending their digital transformation with the customer in mind. In fact, our research shows that their focus remains predominantly on internal efficiency.

3. Senior leaders do not clearly understand why the organization is transforming — a critical stumbling block. Having a clear purpose for digital transformation (i.e., a digital ambition) helps companies start their shift with the end in mind.

Additional insights uncovered by our research include:

• Digital is not being used for the good of the customer. Despite the importance of placing the customer at the center of digital transformation, an alarming number (half) of respondents do not believe their digital transformation improves the customer experience. Leveraging digital for the good of the customer remains a huge opportunity representing immediate competitive advantage for leaders with the courage and tenacity to transform their organization around their customers (an outside-in approach rather than an inside-out one).

• Leaders are not effectively leveraging data. Our research found that 60% of leaders are struggling to become data-driven and use data to make more effective and impactful decisions. Our previous research in 2019 found that 70% of leaders were not leveraging data at any level to inform more rapid decisions. This includes a lack of progress around data visualization, data analytics skills building, and the need to ensure the used data is current, cleansed, and value-adding.

• There’s a lack of cultural alignment. Organizational culture-building continues to be a missed opportunity when considering successful digital transformation. Only one in two leaders believe their culture underpins their transformation, and this alignment lack holds back many organizations. Our 2019 research found that one of the top three reasons that two out of three organizations fail in their transitions is that they have not changed their culture. Five years later, this has become an even more urgent need.

• Acknowledgment needs to convert into leadership action. Just over 70% of leaders recognize that digital transformation is a top concern. They understand there’s a pressing need to become deeply data-driven, including putting in place measures to track progress daily. This reinforces the point that leadership must move from focusing on what needs to be done to how to implement and track while ensuring customers and employees are on board.

[For more from the author on this topic, see: “The Journey from Digitally Detached to Digitally Determined.”]