I recently attended an Executive Roundtable in San Francisco for CMO.com and Adobe, its parent company, for digital executives. The article went live today on CMO.com. Read the entire article here…

When the C-suite of digital movers and shakers representing 20 leading companies wanted to discuss “digital transformation,” they didn’t log on to a webinar.

Instead, they assembled at San Francisco’s posh Clift Hotel, in mid-June, to press the flesh, eat breakfast, share their digital visions, and hear insights from an engineer-turned-award-winning author.

Dr. George Westerman was the keynote speaker to senior executives who gathered at an exclusive executive roundtable hosted by Christopher Parkin, Adobe’s head of industry strategy and marketing. (Note: Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company.)

Parkin told attendees that they’re at the leading edge of digital transformation for their millions of customers globally. He then introduced Dr. Westerman, a research scientist at the MIT Sloan Institute on the Digital Economy, who has been called “the father of digital transformation” and recently co-authored his third book,“Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation.”

Westerman opened by saying that he gets calls from companies all over the world who universally want to know what the digital masters are doing right. He asked the executives around the table what they thought their level of digital mastery was and where they might fall into the digital and leadership capabilities of these four groups:

• Fashionistas: These digital teams look great and have many advanced digital features in silos, but no overarching vision. Though they’ve underdeveloped coordination of all of their digital assets, they have trouble managing their digital culture.

• Beginners: Because they have an immature digital culture, they’re learning on the job through trial and error. Their management is skeptical of the business value of their companies’ advanced digital technologies.

• Digital Masters: They have a strong overarching digital vision, excellent governance across silos, and a strong digital culture. They can juggle many digital initiatives to generate measurable business value and outperform peers.

• Conservatives: They have an overarching digital vision, but may be underdeveloped. They have few advanced digital features, strong digital governance across silos, and take active steps to build digital skills and culture. They can squeeze out more profit though revenues may suffer.

Read the entire article here.