By Maq Masi

The world is not simply becoming digital. It is reorganising itself around digital technology.

Artificial intelligence is changing how decisions are made. Automation is changing how work is performed. Cloud computing is changing how organisations operate. Data is becoming an organisational resource, digital platforms are reshaping markets, and technologies that appeared optional only a decade ago are becoming fundamental to everyday economic and social activity.

Can any modern organisation realistically remain untouched by this transformation?

Probably not.

A small business, multinational company, university, hospital, government department or charitable organisation may use technology differently, but almost every organisation now depends upon some combination of digital communication, software, data, devices, networks, cloud services or automated systems.

This creates a new challenge for leadership.

For much of the digital era, leaders have understandably asked what technology could do for their organisations. Could it reduce costs? Could it increase productivity? Could it reach more customers? Could automation make operations faster? Could data improve decisions? Could artificial intelligence create competitive advantage?

The next generation of leadership must ask another question alongside all of these:

Can our digital development be sustained?

This changes the meaning of digital sustainability.

Digital sustainability should not be treated merely as another environmental policy delegated to an IT department or included in an annual sustainability report. It is increasingly becoming a strategic question about how an organisation creates value while managing the technological resources upon which that value depends.

Digital activity may appear invisible, but it is never truly immaterial. Every cloud service requires infrastructure. Every stored file occupies computing resources. Every AI interaction requires processing. Every connected device has a material lifecycle. Behind the apparent simplicity of the screen exists energy, hardware, networks, data centres, cooling, minerals, manufacturing and eventually electronic waste.

If digital dependency continues to increase, then understanding that dependency must become part of leadership itself.

This is where measurement becomes essential.

Organisations measure revenue, costs, productivity, customer behaviour and financial risk because leaders cannot responsibly manage what they do not understand. Yet many organisations that describe themselves as sustainable still cannot answer a fundamental question: what is our digital footprint?

Without some ability to measure digital consumption and its consequences, sustainability risks becoming an aspiration rather than an organisational practice.

The new leadership challenge is therefore not to resist digital transformation. That would be neither realistic nor desirable. Digital technology can improve productivity, reduce waste, optimise transportation, expand knowledge and help solve extraordinarily complex problems.

The challenge is to make digital transformation sustainable.

That requires leadership to connect technological ambition with organisational responsibility. Leaders establish priorities. Priorities become policies and structures. Structures influence practices. Practices shape organisational behaviour. Repeated responsible behaviour eventually becomes organisational culture.

This creates a wider chain of responsibility: sustainable leadership encourages sustainable digital practices; those practices help create sustainable organisations; sustainable organisations influence employees, customers, suppliers and communities; and collectively those relationships contribute towards a more sustainable world.

No government, technology company, organisation or individual can achieve this independently. The digital world is interconnected, and therefore responsibility for sustaining it must also be shared.

Perhaps this is where the next great change in organisational strategy will occur.

Yesterday, digitalisation was often treated as a competitive advantage. Today, digital capability is increasingly a necessity. Tomorrow, digital sustainability may become the difference between organisations that merely adopt technology and those capable of sustaining their success through it.

The successful leader of the future may therefore be judged not simply by how quickly an organisation adopts artificial intelligence, automation or new digital systems, but by whether that leader can create lasting value from technology while understanding and managing its wider consequences.

Digital sustainability is moving from the edge of organisational thinking towards its centre.

And as the world becomes increasingly dependent upon digital technology, perhaps the question facing leadership is no longer whether organisations should become digital.

They already have.

The more important question is:

Can they become digitally sustainable?

This relationship between leadership, organisational practice, measurement and shared responsibility is explored more deeply in my book Digital Sustainability.

Digital Sustainability by Maq Masi
Amazon: https://a.co/d/0ildFDrB

The future of successful strategy will not simply be digital. It will increasingly depend upon our ability to make the digital world sustainable.