Delve deeper into changing organisational culture and mindset: Learnings from COVID-19

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on organisations globally. No sector has remained unaffected. The lockdown, social distancing norms, work from home policies, and restrictions on public gathering have disrupted both demand and supply. Although governments across the world have started easing restrictions and allowed limited movement of people, new infection cases continue to emerge. According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 will never go away and become a fact of life. Organisations are realising that living with restrictions on mobility of people and remote working (by a majority of employees), amongst others, are likely to become the new normal, instead of an aberration.

In 2015, Deloitte has partnered with MIT Sloan to conduct an in-depth study on digital organisations across the globe and know what differentiates them from traditional organisations. Digital organisations are usually found to be faster, more flexible and distributed, and have a different culture and mindset than traditional businesses. Based on these studies, we believe that organisations exhibiting the traits of a digitally mature organisation have been able to respond to the disruption caused by COVID-19 more effectively. Furthermore, the crisis has accelerated organisations’ digital transformation journey; now more organisations believe that the digital way of working is necessary for business continuity in the future. This has increased the need to focus on building the right culture and mindset to support the digital transformation.

To test these hypotheses, we conducted a study across a group of 39 organisations in India. The group comprised a mix of Indian organisations and multinational companies (MNCs), from different sectors. We interviewed their C-suite members to understand how these organisations are responding to the crisis, and the impact of culture and mindset on driving transformations. We also explored how leaders in these organisations have responded to the crisis and embraced innovation to address these challenges.

We hope that insights from these conversations will help leaders understand what defines digital culture, its importance in ensuring business success, and how to drive it within their organisations.