Digital Leadership

2026 Update: I wrote this article originally in 2019, when digital transformation was still widely treated as an organizational change initiative rather than a systemic transformation. Since then, the pace and systemic impact of technological change, particularly driven by AI and large-scale automation, has accelerated significantly, reshaping both culture and competitive dynamics. In my recent work with boards and executive teams at Inspire 925, I increasingly observe that the foundational cultural challenges described below remain highly relevant, but must now be understood within a broader context of AI-driven transformation, governance complexity and hybrid operating models.

1. A Digital Leader Is A Coach First

Digital leadership places new demands on managers. The leaders of the future must not only have a solid understanding of technology, they should also be able to strategically develop the company’s culture. For example, to implement a company-wide data strategy, a leader not only needs to evaluate different data sources and IT solutions, she also needs to reduce the organizational silos and foster a more collaborative company culture. The role of a digital leader is therefore similar to the role of a coach. She inspires and educates her employees about the technological changes in the organization, connecting and enabling them to make the most of these new data-driven opportunities.

In 2026: This mindset shift is becoming even more critical as AI increasingly augments, and in some cases automates, cognitive work itself.

2. Technology does not automatically make everything better

Blockchain, AI, IoT – jumping on every innovative technology is not a strategy. Technology alone does not automatically make a business better. It’s the people who do. Before implementing a technology-driven change, a digital leader should ask herself: Does the introduction of this new technology create added value for the company? If yes, in what ways does it benefit employees, customers, partners and society at large? What are the primary intended ­as well as the secondary unintended consequences of implementing this new technology? This last question is particularly important because more often than not, new technologies come with unintended consequences. A timely example is Facebook: The intended consequence has been to connect billions of people around the world. The unintended consequence is, among other things, that fake news can now be distributed at a global scale, destabilizing democratic opinion-building processes.

Thus, we need digital leaders who have a holistic, well-rounded educational background in both the humanities as well as the technical sciences; who are ethically-grounded, forward-looking human beings; who are in equal parts critical and enthusiastic about the technological opportunities ahead.

In 2026: In an AI-enabled environment, the leader’s role is evolving further, from driving digital adoption to shaping responsible human-machine collaboration at scale.

3. Industry Boundaries Are Blurring

To fuel future strategic growth, digital leaders will increasingly need to figure out how their organization should engage with digital platforms, innovation ecosystems, academic R&D clusters and cross-industry associations. Especially because digital platforms that connect “unlikely allies”, i.e. startups, corporates and academic players in areas such as precision agriculture, connected logistics or smart home are blurring the traditional boundaries that once set industries apart.

A neat example of a company that embraces cooperation to increase its innovation capacity is the Swiss Post. They partnered with the EPFL spin-off “BestMile” to test driverless buses in the Alps, acquired a majority stake in the startup “notime” to work on same-day delivery and are currently testing drone delivery of blood samples between hospitals thanks to a partnership with the Silicon Valley based drone company “Matternet”. Turning innovation projects like these into business successes can be challenging. In particular, a digital leader needs to master two skillsets: on the one hand, she needs to excel at stakeholder management and facilitation. On the other hand, she needs to actively shape the company’s innovation culture, increasing the organizational capacity for openness, trust, stamina, entrepreneurship and experimentation.

In 2026: What has changed since this was written in 2019 is the speed: organizations now have far less time to build these innovation capabilities before technological shifts begin to materially impact competitiveness.

4. We Can’t Just Continue With Company Culture As Usual

In 2018, in cooperation with the Swiss Management Association (SKO) and an academic partner, I initiated a study on “Leadership – The Swiss Way.” We interviewed over 450 executives in Switzerland, asking them what the typical attributes of Swiss leadership are and how it must evolve in the future. Although the study was only carried out in Switzerland, I believe the results generally apply to the entire German-speaking region. According to the ranking, the top attributes of Swiss leadership are the following: a strong sense of quality, efficiency, performance and loyalty. At the bottom of the ranking, the surveyed managers listed flexibility, inspiration, enthusiasm and willingness to take risks. When we asked the same managers, however, what attributes they thought will be most important for the future, they responded: flexibility, inspiration, enthusiasm and the willingness to take risks, i.e. everything we tend not to find in the current leadership style. So, essentially, the leadership style we exercise today and the one we need tomorrow have very little in common.

Most of the time, a digital leader will therefore only be successful in driving the digital transformation forward in her organization if cultural and technological changes go hand in hand.

In 2026: With the rise of generative AI and agentic systems, the question is no longer whether technology will reshape workflows, but how intentionally leaders choose to guide that transition. Flexibility, inspiration, enthusiasm and a willingness to experiment have become even more critical leadership capabilities.

Overall, digital transformation should no longer be treated as a set of discrete projects or capabilities. It is now deeply intertwined with AI governance, automation, hybrid workforce strategies and systemic resilience. Culture remains the foundation of successful transformation, but leaders must increasingly build organizations capable of learning, adapting and governing complex AI-enabled systems at scale.

What has held true from 2019 to 2026, and will likely persist beyond, is this: technology adoption is rarely the binding constraint; cultural readiness is.

The real question for leaders is no longer whether culture matters in digital transformation, but whether they can evolve it fast enough.