How One CEO Successfully Led a Digital Transformation

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2019

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, has successfully shifted her company’s business to digital products over 15 years. The Dutch multinational started in the 1830s as a publishing house and now earns more than 90% of its revenue from digital. McKinstry explains how her firm kept investing in product innovation – and how she learned to be patient as consumers slowly adopted new products and services. She also credits the role of increased diversity in her organization. McKinstry is the top woman in HBR’s 2019 list of the world’s best-performing chief executives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.2	and practical advice on navigating disability, career failures, and joining a board.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H-BRA's women at work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish.
0:37.0	Change is hard. Digital transformation is harder. Moving a company's
0:48.5	technology, people and products into the future that often fails. A recent survey found that less than one-third
0:55.5	of attempted transformation succeed at improving a company's performance and sustaining growth.
1:01.6	On the show today, we're talking to a CEO who is successfully leading her firm's shift to digital.
1:07.0	Nancy McKinstry is the chair and CEO of Walter's Clueer.
1:11.0	The Dutch multinational began as a publishing house way back in the
1:15.3	1830s and has grown into a global information services company.
1:20.2	When McKinstry became CEO in 2003, the company earned just 31% of its revenue from digital products.
1:27.0	Today, it's 91%. The company's stock price has doubled over the last three years.
1:33.0	And that performance is a big reason why McKinstry is ranked as the top woman on
1:38.0	HBR's list of the 100 best performing CEOs of 2019. And she joins me now. Nancy, thanks for being
1:45.2	here. Thanks for having me.
1:48.2	You started your career in management consulting. Later you had a number of
1:57.1	roles at Walter's Clueer and eventually ran the North American business.
2:01.9	Did you always have ambitions to lead a big company from the top?
2:05.9	No, I did not.
2:07.6	My journey was, I originally started out believing I wanted
2:11.5	to go into the Foreign Service when I was in university and then just by happenstance took an economics class and just found it fascinating.
	...

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