For many companies, the process of building and executing strategy in the digital age seems to generate more questions than answers. Despite digital’s dramatic effects on global business—the disruptions that have upended industries and the radically increasing speed at which business is done—the latest McKinsey Global Survey on the topic suggests that companies are making little progress in their efforts to digitalize the business model.¹ Respondents who participated in this year’s and last year’s surveys report a roughly equal degree of digitalization as they did one year ago,² suggesting that companies are getting stuck in their efforts to digitally transform their business.

The need for an agile digital strategy is clear, yet it eludes many—and there are plenty of pitfalls that we know result in failure. We have looked at how some companies are reinventing themselves in response to digital, not only to avoid failure but also to thrive. In this survey, we explored which specific practices organizations must have in place to shape a winning strategy for digital—in essence, what the operating model looks like for a successful digital strategy of reinvention. Based on the responses, there are four areas of marked difference in how companies with the best economic performance approach digital strategy,³ compared with all others:

• The best performers have increased the agility of their digital-strategy practices, which enables first-mover opportunities.
• They have taken advantage of digital platforms to access broader ecosystems and to innovate new digital products and business models.
• They have used M&A to build new digital capabilities and digital businesses.
• They have invested ahead of their peers in digital talent.

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Increase the agility of creating, executing, and adjusting strategy

One of the biggest factors that differentiate the top economic performers from others is how quick and adaptable they are in setting, executing, and adjusting their digital strategies—in other words, the velocity and adaptability of their operating models for digital strategy. Both are necessary for companies to achieve first-mover (or very-fast-follower) status, which we know to be a source of significant economic advantage.⁴ So how do they do it? We looked at the frequency with which companies follow 11 operational practices of digital strategy. With the exception of M&A—which typically requires a much longer time frame than the other ten, often due to regulatory reasons—respondents in the top revenue decile say their companies carry out each one more frequently than their peers (See Exhibit 1). The link between frequency and performance also holds up when looking at earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).⁵

That speed in strategy links with financial outperformance is not surprising and is consistent with our other work on strategy planning. As the pace of digital-related changes continues to accelerate, companies are required to make larger bets and to reallocate capital and people more quickly. These tactical changes to the creation, execution, and continuous modification of digital strategy enables companies to apply a “fail fast” mentality and become better at both spotting emerging opportunities and cutting their losses in obsolescent ones, which enables greater profitability and higher revenue growth.

Looking ahead

• Make your strategy process more dynamic. By definition, a digital strategy must adapt to the digital-driven changes happening outside the company, as well as within it. Given the breakneck pace of these changes, such a strategy must keep up with the pace of digital and enable first-mover opportunities by being revisited, iterated upon, and adjusted much more frequently than strategies have been in the past. Companies need their digital strategies to act as a road map for ongoing transformation—a living organism that evolves along with the business landscape. In other work, we laid out the four main fights that companies must win to build truly dynamic digital strategies. Organizations must educate their business leaders on digital and foster an attacker’s perspective, so people are more likely to look at their business, industry, and the role of digital through the eyes of new competitors. They must galvanize senior executives to action by building top-team-effectiveness programs. Organizations also must leverage data-driven insights to test and learn—and correct course—quickly. And they must fight the diffusion of their efforts and resources—a constant challenge, given the simultaneous need to digitalize their core business and innovate with new business models. These steps will put companies in a better position to move first in delivering new products and meeting customers’ and partners’ evolving needs in the new ecosystems that platforms are creating.
• Invest in talent and capabilities early and aggressively. Talent is already known as one of the hardest issues to solve as companies transform themselves in their pursuit of digitalization. The results confirm that companies need to embrace this reality and then look at how they can solve it best, whether through smarter, more dynamic allocation of these resources or the use of M&A to accelerate the building of new digital capabilities. Digital is driving an ever-faster pace of innovation, and companies can take advantage of the potential benefits only if they have the capabilities to harness it. For the survey’s top performers, one way forward is leveraging M&A to help build their digital capabilities, rather than trying to build them through a slower, organic approach. These companies are also getting the most from their digital capabilities and investments by deploying them in much more agile ways and creating a more flexible, responsive operating model.
• Redefine how you measure success. The digital era requires that companies move nimbly in order to succeed. Yet many are still measuring performance with the same metrics they used previously—which were designed for a slower pace of business and a rigid strategy-setting process. Companies must move away from old metrics (market share, for example) that are no longer meaningful indicators of economic success. With markets becoming ill-defined due to shifts in industry boundaries and shrinking economic pies within a given sector, market share is no longer a gold-standard metric or even relevant. Companies need to hold themselves to new standards that will indicate whether or not they are truly leading the pack on innovation, productivity, and the adoption of digital technologies. In our experience, outcomes such as being first to market with innovations, leading on productivity, and working with other businesses in the ecosystem (that is, moving from an “us versus them” mind-set on digital to one of partnership) are better indicators of future digital success.