AND Digital leadership is transforming the industry. You’d think appointing a “digital leader” would be simple: find someone who talks about AI and cloud computing, slap a title on them, and call it progress. But AND Digital’s recent leadership shift isn’t about posturing-it’s about operational reality. Last month, when the company brought in Johan van den Hoven-former Google Cloud executive-to lead their charge into the US market, they weren’t just filling a seat. They were making a bet that digital leadership isn’t about fancy buzzwords; it’s about rewiring how an entire organization thinks, operates, and competes. I’ve seen companies spend millions on “digital transformation” only to realize too late that their leadership lacked the stomach for the hard questions: *What gets measured? Who owns the metrics? And why does the sales team still use spreadsheets when CRM tools exist?* AND Digital’s move proves you can’t bolt digital on like a new wing-it has to become the skeleton of the plane. Here’s how they did it, and why their playbook matters more than most realize.
Why AND Digital’s CEO pick wasn’t just about skills
The most revealing detail about Johan van den Hoven’s appointment? He didn’t just come from Google Cloud’s executive ranks-he left because he wanted to turn a legacy playbook inside out. At his previous company, he led the overhaul of a $4B global operation where 60% of processes still ran on manual workflows. The catch? He didn’t start with tech. He started with who would resist it. Middle managers in procurement, for instance, resisted moving to an automated system until he framed the new tool as *their* power-not IT’s. “They argued it would make them obsolete,” he told me in an off-the-record chat. “I asked them what they’d rather do: spend 12 hours a week reconciling paperwork, or spend 12 hours analyzing why their region’s margins were dropping.” The answer, predictably, was the latter. That’s the kind of digital leadership AND Digital needed: someone who treats resistance as data, not drama.
Three pitfalls most companies trip on
Companies that treat digital leadership as a checkbox hire the wrong people-or worse, they hire the right people and trap them in silos. Van den Hoven’s first 90 days proved this. Here’s what he did differently:
- He made accountability visible. Every department’s “digital scorecard” lived on a shared dashboard, ranked by team-not just by IT or marketing. The customer service team’s AI response time became a boardroom topic. No more “digital” as a separate KPI.
- He rewrote the “no” button. When a sales manager argued that a new CRM would disrupt their quarterly targets, Van den Hoven didn’t debate features. He asked: *”If we don’t adopt this, how much of your pipeline will leak in the next 12 months?”* The answer became the new conversation.
- He hired for curiosity, not certifications. His first hires weren’t degreed data scientists. They were operations managers who’d spent years fixing what broke in the old system. “I’d rather have someone who asks *why* a tool failed than someone who can recite its specs,” he said.
The result? AND Digital’s US launch timeline shaved 18 weeks off their initial projection-not because they built faster tools, but because they stopped treating people as obstacles to change and started treating them as designers of it.
How to steal this without the budget
Van den Hoven’s approach isn’t exclusive to companies with deep pockets. The real leverage lies in where you apply pressure-not just on IT budgets, but on how teams think about their work. Start with the 20% of processes that *feel* broken but no one dares fix. At AND Digital, it was the customer data platforms. Before Van den Hoven, three teams owned the same metrics in separate silos. His team didn’t just build a new platform-they redesigned ownership: Marketing now owns the *business use* of the data (e.g., “Why are our upsell rates declining?”), while finance owns the ROI (e.g., “How does this tool reduce churn by 15%?”). The trick? Force teams to answer one question: *What would happen if we removed this team’s “digital” budget tomorrow?* If they can’t answer without panic, you’ve found your leverage point.
Your first move: The “digital literacy audit”
Want to test your company’s digital leadership maturity? Grab a whiteboard and ask these three questions for every team:
- If this team’s work were 50% automated today, who would be fired? (Answer reveals who’s guarding the status quo.)
- What’s the one tool they’re using that wasn’t designed for their job? (Hint: It’s probably a hacked spreadsheet.)
- Who in this room would quit if we replaced their current tech stack with a $100/month alternative? (If no one raises their hand, you’re in trouble.)
AND Digital’s audit uncovered that their customer support team was using a homegrown chatbot that had 22% error rates-but no one dared replace it because the “maintainer” was the department’s star performer. Van den Hoven’s solution? He hired an external consultant to rebuild it in two weeks, then forced the team to present the results to their peers. The bot’s accuracy jumped to 88%. The “maintainer” became a champion of the new system. The lesson? Digital leadership isn’t about fixing tools-it’s about fixing the people who resist them.
Johan van den Hoven’s first year at AND Digital hasn’t been about perfecting cloud infrastructure. It’s about proving that digital leadership isn’t a title-it’s a lens. The companies that win in the next decade won’t be the ones with the shiniest tech stacks. They’ll be the ones where every manager, not just the C-suite, can answer: *”What would happen if we did this differently?”* AND Digital’s bet is that the answer isn’t discomfort-it’s opportunity. The question for your organization? How many of your teams are still waiting for permission to ask it.
