Greg Kihlstrom’s Vision for Digital Transformation

The Gist

• Agile leadership. Setting clear goals, embracing experimentation, and adapting with data-driven decisions foster alignment and innovation.
• Composable architectures. Strategic roadmaps for modular systems enhance agility and customer experience while avoiding poor decisions.
• Human-centric transformation. Balancing technology with people and processes is key to successful and resonant digital transformation.
• Collaborative data governance. Shared responsibility in data quality and ethics builds trust and supports AI-driven insights.

Greg Kihlstrom, best-selling author, speaker and entrepreneur, is a leading voice in digital transformation and customer experience. As one of CMSWire’s 2024 Contributors of the Year, Greg shares practical strategies for balancing technology and human connection while fostering trust and innovation.

This Q&A explores his perspectives on agile leadership, data governance and the power of human-centric transformation.

Editor’s note: Greg is the fourth profile in our CMSWire Contributor of the Year series. Stay tuned for more insights from top industry leaders in this week.

Table of Contents

Leadership in Digital Transformation

CMSWire: What strategies can leaders employ to secure and maintain organizational buy-in for digital transformation initiatives, ensuring alignment across all levels?

Greg: It starts with setting a clear direction and ensuring that it aligns with the other leaders in the organization. When teams feel they are part of a larger team and working toward common goals (versus at cross purposes), that lays the foundation for better collaboration and alignment down the road. This also means that leaders must be consistent in their messaging and supportive of their fellow leaders. Leading by example shows the rest of their teams how they can work collaboratively with their peers even when things get tough.

The next part is to understand that things move quickly, and there needs to be a plan to continuously improve the approaches being taken. Leaders can sometimes mistake course-correcting as being something that should be avoided.

Instead, teams want to know that data, common sense and better information will prevail when big changes need to happen. This is why I’m a huge fan of agile approaches. Being agile doesn’t mean being reactive to the slightest change, but instead encourages a collaborative approach to using the best possible data to make plans for what’s next.

Finally, there needs to be an embrace of a culture of experimentation because no one is working with a full set of information or knowledge of the future. Instead, it needs to be invented one step at a time.

One of the biggest challenges with experimentation is that it means that not every experiment will achieve the desired results. To many this equates to the f-word: failure. But in reality, there is no failure if there is sufficient learning, and leaders need to embrace the results of experimentation, driving innovation through forward progress.

Related Article: How an Agile Marketing Process Makes Good Marketing Teams Great

Integrating CDPs and CRMs

CMSWire: How can organizations effectively leverage both Customer Data Platforms and Customer Relationship Management systems to create a unified and actionable customer view?

Greg: Education is key to understanding when and how to use both CDPs and CRMs effectively and in the ways that benefit an organization most. On the surface, many may ask why both are even needed (it’s all customer data, right?), yet when explained and demonstrated properly, this becomes abundantly clear.

Use real-world examples and explain the strengths and shortcomings of each. Also, create clear guidelines of when each should be used and by whom. When work gets busy, people tend to fall back on old habits, so lay out clear ground rules to make it easy to understand.

Implementing Composable Architectures

CMSWire: What are the critical steps in developing a strategic roadmap for composable architecture, and how can it enhance business agility and customer experience?

Greg: Successful companies are intentional about their approaches, and they are also realistic. While organizations may opt for a mostly “monolithic” approach in some cases, there are almost no organizations that don’t benefit from the option of composability.

Those that are intentionally composable will find that even if they choose a few hubs to build their composable architectures around, having a clear understanding of when to add a new tool (and its corresponding integrations) to their composable architecture will also help prevent them from making poor decisions down the road.

Related Article: The Heart of Composable Architecture

Human-Centric Digital Transformation

CMSWire: How can companies balance technological advancements with the human element to ensure successful digital transformation that resonates with both employees and customers?

Greg: No technological advancement in a company is successful without humans supporting and sustaining them. While there may be a time in the not-so-distant future that is not the case, the fact remains that the technology component is often the most straightforward element in a transformational change initiative. It is the people and process change components that are both the most difficult to be successful with, as well as the most determinant of the ultimate success of the initiative.