Paul Leinwand is the Global Managing Director of Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting group, where he advises clients on the topics of strategy, growth, and capability building. Leinwand is also an Adjunct Professor of Management and Strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He has co-authored three books as well as several articles in the Harvard Business Review and strategy+business.

Mahadeva Matt Mani is a Partner at PwC’s Strategy&. As a global leader of their transformation platform, he works with companies and leaders across industries to achieve improvements in business performance and organization cost and effectiveness. Mani has over 25 years of industry and consulting experience, and he’s co-authored one book and many articles published in the Harvard Business Review and strategy+business.

Digital transformation isn’t just about the latest and greatest technology — it’s also about leadership. But how is digital changing the work and role of a leader? What do leaders need to succeed in the digital age? Paul Leinwand and Mahadeva Matt Mani talk about this and more as they join Thomas A. Stewart on The Leading Edge — a place where new ideas emerge and are sharpened, and where leaders look to find the edge that brings success for themselves, their teams, and their enterprises.

With the rise of digital, many leaders are worried about keeping up with the newest tool or strategy. But, Leinwand and Mani say there’s a more important question that leaders need to address: how are you going to lead your organization through these changes? These two strategy experts have thoroughly researched the effects of digital transformation on leaders in a multi-year, in-depth study of leadership, digitization, and transformation at a dozen companies, ranging from Honeywell to Adobe, Microsoft to Komatsu. In their book, Beyond Digital: How Great Leaders Transform Their Organizations and Shape the Future, they detail how these and other enterprises have navigated this shift and the key steps leaders should follow to find success digitally.

Instead of focusing on processes and tools, Leinwand and Mani say that companies must begin by reimagining their place in the world, starting from there to rethink strategy, talent, and the products and services they sell. As the digital world evolves, so do the expectations of a leader. How do you uniquely contribute to customers and stakeholders? What value can you bring to your ecosystem of networks to create a win-win for everyone? The foundations of success in the digital age are laid in a values-based circle of trust between you, your team, and your customers. Focusing on this will help you and your organization stay relevant — regardless of the digital disruption around you.

In this episode of The Leading Edge, Thomas A. Stewart sits down with Paul Leinwand and Mahadeva Matt Mani, Global Managing Director and Partner of Strategy&, respectively. Together, they discuss how leadership is changing in this new digital age. Leinwand and Mani lay out the steps leaders should take to navigate current changes, the skillsets leaders need to succeed digitally, and how to gain privileged insights from a value-based customer relationship.