Alexander Loth - Decisively Digital

Figure 1.4shows an example of both values plotted by strategic topic. In this graph we see that the organization has plenty of digital capabilities for big data processing and cloud computing, but the employees are not yet trained accordingly. On the other side, the employees are ready for modern work, but the organization has not yet adopted the required digital capabilities.

Figure 1.4Graph showing digital maturity and organizational readiness by strategic topic

A digital maturity assessment, shown in Figure 1.5, can help you to understand which digital capabilities are already available in your organization and if the organization is ready to use these capabilities. These questions are quite generic and should be seen as a rough blueprint that you can enhance and fine-tune for specific audiences within your organization.

The questions for this assessment are grouped by strategic topic and have two sections each.

Digital Maturity: The digital capabilities that are available in the organization

Organizational Readiness: The digital capabilities that are adopted by the employees

Figure 1.5A digital maturity assessment

Based on your results you can further explore specific (or all) strategic topics with the interviews and customer examples in the following chapters.

1 1Schwab, Klaus, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016.

2 2“Disney Strikes Streaming-TV Gold,” The Economist, November 12, 2020 ( www.economist.com/business/2020/11/14/disney-strikes-streaming-tv-gold).

3 3Microsoft, “AXA Ensures Innovation in Digital Customer Service and Empowers Employees with Microsoft 365,” November 13, 2019 ( customers.microsoft.com/de-DE/story/765562-axa-insurance-m365-casestudy).

4 4Tapadinhas, Joao, and Idoine, Carlie, “Citizen Data Science Augments Data Discovery and Simplifies Data Science,” December 9, 2016 ( www.gartner.com/en/documents/3534848).

5 5Loth, Alexander, Visual Analytics with Tableau. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019.

6 6The Digital Strategy Big Picture Template is available online within the Supplementary Material section on the Decisively Digital companion website: www.decisivelydigital.org/supplementary-material/.

7 7 “Gartner's Big Data Definition Consists of Three Parts, Not to Be Confused with Three ‘V's,” Forbes, www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2013/03/27/gartners-big-data-definition-consists-of-three-parts-not-to-be-confused-with-three-vs/

Elissa Fink, former CMO, Tableau Software

Source: Erin Rinabarger

Recently retired as CMO for Tableau, 1 Elissa Fink led all marketing strategy and execution for 11 years, from pre-IPO startup with ~$5 million annual revenue to public enterprise with $1 billion+ in revenue. She knows growth, scale, and building disruptive brands. Prior to Tableau, Elissa served in marketing, product management, and product engineering executive positions. Now semiretired, Elissa advises tech companies, serves on multiple boards, and teaches at the University of Washington.

In this interview with Elissa we are going to explore how to charge a brand with culture and how this also helps in hiring people.

Alexander: As CMO you were creating a culture that is unique for a B2B software company. How did you discover Tableau? How did you become Tableau's CMO?