In this article, packed with actionable insights, we’ll talk you through how company culture impacts digital transformation, and how you can ensure that your culture is second to none, to get the best results.
Why is company culture important for digital transformation?
Over the last few years, technology has become more pivotal than ever in our daily lives. However, this unprecedented growth is closely linked with an issue many employers like you might be facing—the resulting talent shortage for sought-after cloud specialists like MuleSoft Developers. Finding the right talent is a challenge in itself, let alone building a company culture that helps that talent thrive, boosting your digital transformation journey in turn.
But since your digitalization strategies will impact the day-to-day of your organization’s backbone—your employees—these aspects are directly related to one another. Your employees can make or break your company culture (and your digital transformation efforts).
As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once explained:
“A great workplace is not an espresso, lush benefits, sushi lunches. We do some of these things, but only if they are efficient at attracting and retaining stunning colleagues.”
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that a study by McKinsey concluded that the main hurdle in digital transformation for businesses is the lack of strong and common culture. What’s more, a quarter of the companies surveyed said that their biggest challenge is a culture that’s opposed to risks and experimentation. In other words, the sort of attitude that could propel any business towards unprecedented growth.
Reports like Mason Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: Salesforce Edition further reveals the importance of certain employee benefits as crucial in attracting Salesforce talent. 21% of employees surveyed across the Salesforce ecosystem agree that flexible working hours would entice them to accept or consider a new role. Furthermore, home working is the top consideration among the respondents (44%), outperforming bonus incentives (31%) or four or more weeks of paid time off (41%). With this in mind, on the backdrop of a highly competitive talent market, shaping your culture to further improve your business’s digital transformation, attract in-demand specialists, and maintain a competitive edge, is more imperative than it’s ever been.
Here are five proven approaches you can adapt in your company culture to further facilitate your digital transformation journey.
1. Promote externally oriented teams
In externally oriented teams, also known as X-teams, networks are forged both inside and outside the firm. Not only does this strengthen your employees’ professional connections, but allows them to keep pace with the latest market trends, technologies, and competitors, all while learning by talking to people from different backgrounds and cultures who may have fresh perspectives to offer.
Having such a team structure means that ideas reach the company from external channels too—including feedback and marketing channels, as well as technology-driven innovations. Particularly with technologies like MuleSoft (which offers plenty of customizable solutions), this approach allows professionals to explore new ideas that are fully tailored to your stakeholders’ or clients’ needs. This sort of proactivity breeds innovation—especially as teams can make the most of MuleSoft’s capabilities to solve a particular problem for your organization or one of your clients, or even within their wider industry, further elevating the profile of your organization.
2. Eliminate micromanagement
Everyone knows that micromanaging is bad for business. Not only does it negatively impact the team’s morale, but it also creates a tone of distrust across the wider company. And it can be a big turn-off for MuleSoft professionals.
Think of “micromanagement” as a symptom of a lack of trust. In order to eliminate the symptom forever, you need to address the root cause—the lack of trust among your managers in a remote or hybrid team, when they may not see or even interact with their direct reports on a day-to-day basis.
Harvard Business Review recently published some astounding research, illustrating just how wide the gap of disconnect is between managers and employees in the era of remote and hybrid work. While most managers surveyed believe that working from home reduces their employee productivity levels, their reports state the exact opposite—that it makes them far more productive.
Such negative perceptions from the manager’s perspective create ripe conditions for micromanagement practices and threaten to exclude certain groups, already underrepresented in tech, from applying, including working mums, carers, and skilled specialists with accessibility needs who may not be able to commute to the office in-person.
Ensuring that everyone is on the same page in terms of what sort of communication and collaboration is expected of them can foster effective delegation. Setting instructions on what, when, and how information needs to be reported—and to whom—is one way of helping managers delegate work, and employees to take more ownership over the projects they’ve been assigned.
However, the art of delegation isn’t innate to everyone—which is why assigning the appropriate training to all those in management positions is crucial. After all, what’s the use of investing time and effort in digital transformation, if your managers are still working with outdated methods of watching everyone over their shoulders?
3. Incentivize collaboration and sharing of best practices
Going digital can break down any existing walls and silos, hindering your teams from collaborating and cross-collaborating effectively. Especially for MuleSoft professionals, a collaborative culture not only makes your team stronger but strengthens your business as a whole.
Championing collaborative spaces—including virtual ones like group chats on Teams or Slack—and periodic in-person and virtual team meetings can create multiple opportunities for relationship-building, enabling your employees to work together effectively.
A good starting point is to set up an internal resources repository in which employees can share their best practices. For MuleSoft professionals, especially MuleSoft Developers, this can be revolutionary—with their area of expertise under constant evolution, promoting the creation of documentation can be especially helpful as it ensures that your MuleSoft teams are always up to date with the latest developments.
Naturally, having a diverse team can bring a whole new set of ideas and perspectives—and by incentivizing collaboration through, for instance, rewarding team efforts, you’ll show your employees that you truly value what they bring to the table. And if you need further help to attract and retain diverse MuleSoft talent, Revolent is here to help you do just that.
4. Encourage smart risk-taking
Well-considered risk-taking is crucial to business growth—and something that should be encouraged. Digital transformation brings endless opportunities for business evolution and growth. However, if some of your employees are not ready to take the leap, they’re less likely to see what’s on the other end of taking that risk.
Especially with MuleSoft, there are a plethora of integrations possible. So, knowing how to think out of the box and take calculated risks at all levels will allow your MuleSoft specialists to discover new opportunities and solve problems, ultimately reaching your business goals faster.
The pandemic is perhaps the best example of this. Those companies who took calculated risks to switch to digital and cloud solutions—even if only partially—before restrictions forced them to do it, were also the ones who were able to maintain their operations almost seamlessly, once the lockdown hit. And who, ultimately, found themselves one step ahead of their competition.
The most important step in implementing this approach to risk-taking is ensuring that your managers lead by example. Implement quarterly performance reviews, where they can voice new initiatives they’d like to trial, backed by data, and assess the success of these. Over time, this method of trial-and-error will become a habit, reverberating across other parts of your business.
It’s also important to reward risk-takers, and this does not necessarily need to translate to a monetary bonus. If your employees are showing an appetite for learning, for example, why not sign them up for a Salesforce or MuleSoft training course, so they can acquire these in-demand skills and grow your internal capability while boosting their long-term career prospects? It’s a win-win.
5. Favor innovative 'modus operandi' and diverse perspectives
Digital transformation and innovation are closely intertwined—in fact, one cannot exist without the other. If you want to provide your clients or business stakeholders with the best solutions, you need to be continually innovating.
However, these fresh ideas are almost always a by-product of the company’s ability to foster an equal and inclusive workplace—one in which diversity is cherished and appreciated.
Past research by Deloitte concludes that organizations embracing inclusivity are 6 times more innovative than those that don’t; 8 times more likely to achieve better business results; and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets.
Focusing on your ED&I strategy should no longer be an issue of if, but rather when. Not only do businesses need tech professionals who can help harness the full potential of MuleSoft applications and establish new best-practice methods of working—they also need a diverse workforce that can bring new perspectives, fresh ideas, more creativity, and innovation to the table.
Finding the right MuleSoft talent that your business needs and retaining it is certainly no easy feat. However, reviewing the different facets that make your company culture and reshaping your internal values is a great starting point, if you’re struggling to attract and hold onto certified MuleSoft professionals.
And if you need a hand with sourcing the right talent, Revolent can help. We can solve your MuleSoft digital talent skills gaps by cross-training experienced tech professionals into MuleSoft specialists. Not only will this help further boost your ED&I initiatives and bring fresh perspectives to drive innovation—you’ll also be able to cut attrition costs by boosting retention.
