In 2013, as fast-emerging digital applied sciences and channels have been making a sea change in shopper product advertising, A.G. Lafley, then CEO of Procter & Gamble, acted to make sure that the patron packaged items big wouldn’t be left behind. He appointed F.D. Wilder, considered one of this text’s coauthors, as world head of e-business and tasked him with driving digital transformation throughout P&G’s many manufacturers. The aim of this initiative was to develop and combine P&G’s digital advertising talents, e-commerce channels, and IT platforms — driving up gross sales, revenue margins, and money circulation within the course of.

Because the e-business staff thought-about this difficult mandate, it centered on the digital advertising capability of P&G’s model and enterprise managers as a key enabler of the transformation. Sadly, the staff discovered that the literature concerning digital transformation tends to present quick shrift to the potential of leaders: It focuses primarily on elevating the “digital IQ” of the workforce — that’s, the measurement of how a lot a company can revenue from digital and technological options.

Digital IQ has its limitations as an efficient measure of capability, not the least of which is its sturdy emphasis on instructing and testing for generic vocabulary and information. But digital and different transformational efforts practically all the time require workers to work in new and unfamiliar methods. To make sure that they’ll do that new work, leaders should have the ability to assess worker capability by connecting it not solely to information and expertise but additionally to focused actions and efficiency outcomes. Solely then can they determine and activate pockets of power within the digital capability of workers and isolate and remediate pockets of weak point.

Assessing the Dimensions of Worker Skill

To evaluate worker capability, leaders must determine the attributes of worker roles and convert these attributes into efficiency metrics. Then they want dashboards that can be utilized to trace and enhance these metrics, reminiscent of by crafting coaching applications and different interventions to handle gaps within the talents of people and teams.

At P&G, the e-business staff recognized a set of key attributes that outline the digital advertising capability of the corporate’s model and enterprise managers. These 5 attributes have been anchored within the buyer’s digital journey and relate to the basic advertising funnel (discovery, consciousness, curiosity, buy, and loyalty).