My Journey: The Humanised Trinity of Digital Leadership
I was enrolled to understand the mapping of the journey towards digital excellence. My start was delayed, but I was excited nonetheless when I was offered a spot in the Digital Leadership Excellence (DLE) programme after a colleague had to pull out. I jumped at the opportunity, knowing this was the exact growth challenge I had been seeking. In fact, missing the first two months of Cohort 3 only fueled my determination to learn quickly and catch up. It did not deter my enthusiasm as I was certain I was on the trail to something great and was committed to making a difference.
The aim: to decode the mastery of skills in the ever-evolving and intensive learning curve of digitalisation, an era that is moving faster than any atom. I had anticipated a curriculum of strategies and frameworks. Instead, what I received was a profound lesson in humanity, a revelation that the true engine of transformation is an unlikely trinity of Courage, Culture, and Purpose.
The foundation: More than tools and touchpoints, it needed more…
We began with the hard skills. An immense wave of knowledge flooded our minds that was already very much set in what we have learned and navigated in the course of our careers: dissecting the mechanics of digital transformation, learning how the future of digitalisation and leadership work inherently together, and how understanding customer behaviour and automation can streamline operations.
The very first day, I was met with an immense conflict of understanding of how things have changed and how it is essential to be immersed in the “voice of the customer”. To me it has always been pushing the envelope further a to achieve what is or what we thought was the goal.
Clearly, in the execution of tasks, I realised we had failed to see what is core and important to us.
This was my introduction to the first pillar: Courage. It is an inward-looking step and brave honesty in knowing what we know isn’t enough.
Dual courage: To lead and to change, cognisance before leadership begins
This wasn’t about reckless bravery. It was about the courage to lead — to stand in the face of uncertainty, to make decisions with incomplete information and to champion a vision that others cannot yet see. It’s the courage to say, “We must move here,” when the destination is shrouded in fog.
Huawei’s energy and synergy to me was clear and concise, the tandem of moving in cohesion with all was imperative to success. This has taught me that courage is not just about the initial thrust; it is also about the resilience to persist. This is where the courage to change comes in. We learned that stubborn adherence to a failing plan is not dedication; it is folly.
True leadership involves the humility to admit when a tactic isn’t working and the agility to pivot, all while keeping the ultimate goal—the True North—fixed in view.
It is the foundational path to success which is rarely a straight line, but a series of calibrated corrections.
The uncomfortable teacher: Embracing intelligent failure
This concept of “calibrated corrections” led us to the most challenging, yet liberating, part of the journey: the acceptance of failure. The course reframed failure not as a mark of shame, but as the most effective teacher. In the relentless pursuit of innovation and customer relevance, missteps are not just inevitable; they are essential, just as Thomas Edison conducted plenty of failed experiments before finally producing the light bulb we use today. That’s the price of admission for true breakthroughs, which to me seemed to be useful learning laboratories that yielded priceless data, bringing us one step closer to a solution that would work.
Failure, we learned, is simply success in progress.
Taken from: https://blog.huawei.com/en/post/2025/10/31/digital-leadership-excellence-dle-journey-must-continue