When creating a digital business, we need all the help we can get. Since a digital business is ultimately about the customer experience, departments and silos can destroy most initiatives.

Everyone is well intentioned but there are practical forces at play that just don’t help. Most prestige, promotions and performance are based on individual and departmental objectives. It is human nature.

Time and much effort needs to be devoted to work hard at smashing the silos for the benefit of the business as a whole. The CEO is the chief smasher. No one else can or will do it.

That may require:

• Reworking organization structures
• Rethinking performance and compensation systems
• Building a culture of collaboration
• Creating Centers of Excellence

The debate about the responsibility over digital business change as a whole and within specific functions and processes has some challenges. Genuine change is archaic, even if it needs to be held as Chief Digital Officers, CIOs and other CxOs all play a role.

Here again, there is no ideal solution regarding responsibility: context does matter.

Marketing should learn from IT and IT from marketing. Sales from customer service, the contact center from sales, the list goes on.

A digital-savvy culture is not the goal of digital transformation but today’s CxO needs to be not only digital-savvy but also know

• What others are doing and
• Their experiences, methods and skill sets.

As for the responsibility debates: here as well, multiple options exist as there is ‘no one size fits all’.