In Going Digital`s Top 5 section, we will be presenting all the important and practice-oriented topics that are high up on the agendas of leading (corporate) lawyers in Germany and of our project partners. With Top 5, we would like to contribute further to improving transparency in the German legal market on both the demand and supply side together with companies, law firms and service providers. Our Top 5 column supplements the practice-oriented reporting introduced in the Going Digital magazine last year. And because time is a factor – and of course, time is money – we have tried to make our reporting as succinct as possible.
In this issue, Zoë Andreae shares her insights with us.
- What is Clubhouse? Overnight Clubhouse turned into a refreshing lockdown hype that instantly grasped many people’s fascination, especially through the exclusivity of getting an invite to the app and its both informal and open-minded discussions. While a deeply unsatisfied and craved-for desire of many extroverts, usual keynote speakers and thought leaders to communicate more seamlessly again beyond Zoom conference is still being stilled, already a few weeks later, Clubhouse is losing its appeal among mainstream users. With spring approaching and less people sitting isolated and lonely at home, how will the future potential of Clubhouse as a social communication platform develop?
- Lockdown opportunities: Besides experimenting with Clubhouse as a new marketing and sales channel, these extraordinary times should be seen as an opportunity to reflect on and re-evaluate existing strategies, goals, processes and systems. Are they still adequately competitive and incorporate sufficient focus on digital transformation? How far have we actually digitalized beyond the pandemic’s must-haves that enable working from home? How can we use this momentum to initiate company-wide digital transformation projects that fundamentally reshape and reposition our company to make it sustainably competitive in an ever faster changing digital world?
- Digital transformation projects: the priority is to START. Even if you start small, START. Even if it goes slow, START. Start with a coherent and overarching digital long-term vision and strategy for your company. Set ambitious goals, secure a budget, and START with small lighthouse projects that can have a highly visible and significant impact for the company. Be thorough and take all relevant stakeholders on this journey, even if it slows down the process, so that you have all necessary experiences and perspectives at the table and, more importantly from a change management perspective, so that you achieve maximum commitment everyone that will be impacted.
- Beyond initiatives to increase our company’s digital readiness and data-drivenness to advance predictability and scalability, it is essential that we anticipate and identify disruptive forces in our markets emerging in these times of fundamental change. Even better, would be to proactively develop and implement disruptive strategies ourselves, while our core business is still strong, to prevent being surprised and replaced by them once it is already too late, i.e. when they have already started to drive us away from our seemingly uncontested home turf.
- Finally, how will our company’s after Covid-19 (AC) reality and, as such, new normal look like? Will remote working be an integral part of our company culture from now on and what impact does that have on our company’s performance and culture? How can we ensure our company protects its former strengths and leverages its newly acquired ones? What new challenges and frictions have emerged and need to be managed? Finally, are we well prepared and flexible enough to respond to an equally unexpected and drastic crisis in the future? Many complex questions to be answered and exciting new opportunities to be seized in the months ahead!
