On January 16, MIMA hosted its first event of the year,
Digital Transformation- Making It Work for You in 2019, presented by Jim Cuene. The venue -University of St. Thomas’ Schulze Auditorium was a perfect setting for this sold-out event because Jim is a Tommie!
Past MIMA board members were in attendance, an inspiring sight.
Jim kicked the event off by acknowledging MIMA has made a big difference in his career, all stemming from a quick conversation to join our interactive community almost 13 years ago.
The key takeaways are as follows:
Digital transformation is only an empty catch phrase when there is neither a plan nor any organizational support behind it.
Strategic change, that leads to differentiation, is the driving premise behind digital transformation.
Jim introduced a model that helps with prioritization of key activities at any given organization. His plan accounts for items like external influences, functional goals and business aspirations.
According to Jim’s vision, marketers are in a prime position to influence transformation in our organizations. To do that, we need to help our CEO articulate how marketing, and digital transformation efforts, can help enhance the organization’s five-year strategy. This groundwork will assist the CEO when they are presenting plans to the board of directors.
The best digital transformation plans need to be multi-year, proactively evolving, focused on a business as a whole and designed for maximum impact.
In preparation to this event, Jim had put together a survey that asked individuals how their organizations were experiencing digital transformation, how much support was given to the initiative, the degree of understanding of its efforts, among other things.
After finalizing his presentation, Jim gave a quick overview of the survey results. In a nutshell, there is work to be done to build support and alignment around digital transformation.
During his Q&A, a member of the audience pointed out that Jim had utilized the pronoun “she” when talking about CEO’s. Jim responded he has been speaking this way for the last three years to continue to bring awareness to the gender gap at the C-Suite.
Jim’s explanation was particularly relevant on January 16 as the Washington Post ran a story about Barbara Proctor, the first woman founder of an Ad Agency: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/barbara-proctor-first-african-american-woman-to-own-an-advertising-agency-dies-at-86/2019/01/16/e338a846-1932-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.b6c84b6f49be
This presentation was the ideal start to 2019.
