CIMA E1 Syllabus B. Technology In A Digital World - Digital Mindset - Notes ^{1 / 5}

Digital Mindset

A digital mindset is the concept of seeing the bigger picture of technological change and anticipating how this will affect society and also business. 

The key aspects to the Forbes digital mindset are:

• Provide vision yet empower others

  A clear vision of how a business should evolve and transform in this digital age, whilst supporting and empowering the initiatives of employees to translate the high level vision into ground floor action.

• Give up control yet 'architect' the choices

  Empowering employees by giving up control does not mean leaders stop being in the driver's seat. 

  Instead of sticking to rigid rules, leaders should seek to influence outcomes more through the way they design and present the choices to those best suited to make the decisions and carry out the tasks.

• Sustain yet disrupt

  Digitally minded leaders need to mitigate conflicts and serve as a bridge between the old and the new.

  Existing business practices must be sustained and enhanced to ensure profitability. 

  New innovations and ideas will disrupt the old practices and may meet resistance from parties within the organisation, but they must also be protected and nurtured, as they have potential to benefit the future.

• Rely on data yet trust your intuition

  Digitally minded leaders must look beyond the numbers and historical data and use their vision and intuition to make decisions.

• Be sceptical yet open minded

  There are many new technologies that may succeed or just disappear, therefore digitally minded leaders should maintain a degree of caution but also consider and try things to learn lessons and see what fits.

Change Adept

This is a term given to cities that are capable and have the capacity and appetite to deal with change.

The Automation Paradox

Finance professionals can lose sharpness with some of their foundational skills as more fundamental finance operations become automated.

Automated systems can sometimes deal poorly with new or atypical scenarios and fail.

This can lead to organisations getting caught out by unforeseen events, as complacent professionals rush to refamiliarize themselves with basic operations.