5 people practices that support digital transformation

Mondi makes packaging and paper sustainable by design. In early 2019 we embarked on another sustainable design adventure: establishing a Group Digital Transformation unit – Mondi DX – to drive digital transformation.

With B2B customers in over a dozen industries, operations in 30 countries, multiple production processes, and 26,000 colleagues to bring along on the journey, Mondi DX has an ambitious and exciting challenge ahead.

One of the early learnings – no surprise here – is that meaningful collaboration across teams with different expertises and working cultures is an integral success factor. Here are five concrete approaches we’ve taken to support that: 

Let the team do the hiring

Team members know which skills and personal strengths are needed to fill gaps – and which candidates truly have them. In Mondi DX, our team takes the lead in selecting and interviewing candidates, and our manager trusts our hiring recommendations. Hiring this way, we build a foundation for good understanding and relationships from the start. As a bonus, we’re building one of the most diverse teams we’ve ever been part of and this diversity generates better ideas and solutions for Mondi. 

Communities not hierarchies

As you might guess from the first point, we in Mondi DX believe that communities, not hierarchies, help us do our best work. Our data and agile communities are centres of gravity (and excellence) where members meet regularly to exchange, deep dive, and learn from each other. Crucially, we strive to make our communities inclusive without diluting the content. Colleagues from all units and locations are welcome and the perspectives they bring enrich our understanding of business environments beyond the digital team.

Everybody speak up

Communities develop their full potential when all members contribute. When new members join our communities we ask them to add content to the collaboration sites and share their experience in a meetup, as part of onboarding. We believe in the benefit that colleagues from varying backgrounds and experiences bring – whether it be introducing a different tool or a favoured approach for projects. 

Jump those silos

We find that deploying DX team members in projects across Mondi’s different business units makes the most of our individual skills, whether it be in big data, deep learning, app development, time series analysis, or something else. Taking our particular skills and approaches into Mondi’s different businesses and operations helps speed knowledge exchange and supports transparency – helping to bridge the silos that tend to form in enterprise organisations.

Encourage digital ambassadors

Good communication is key to any company-wide transformation. In addition to sharing news regularly on our intranet and through internal events, we encourage ‘digital transformation ambassadors’ on our shop floors. Operations managers see the potential in digital projects; process engineers see the benefits. We encourage and support these colleagues and others in sharing important digitalisation messages and new approaches with their networks.

Martin Gutberlet, Mondi Group’s Chief Digital Officer, and Jillian Augustine, Data Scientist and facilitator of our Data Community, will be speaking at WeAreDevelopers Congress Vienna on 28 November 2019 and sharing ideas about building effective DX teams. Check back here after the Congress for takeaways!