I really like the framing of digital leadership as a form of gardening in this post:

I think of digital capabilities as the plants that we are trying to grow throughout our organisation’s digital garden, its culture. Sometimes we need to consider whether we’re sowing the right seeds in the first place to grow the capabilities we want in our staff. But other times we might be puzzled when digital capabilities flourish in one part of the organisation but not another. Maybe there are other things we should consider.

Perhaps we’re lacking the right infrastructure? We need to invest in the right equipment to ensure that people’s experience of digital tools is a positive and productive one. If our colleagues’ experience of using digital tools is unreliable then they are unlikely to take root. Or perhaps we’re hoping that simply owning all the right equipment will be enough, but we haven’t invested the time and effort to water the seeds with the training people need to use it confidently.

Proper understanding of digital in the senior leadership tier of local government is one of the biggest things holding the sector back. I wonder if useful metaphors like this might help with explaining it to people in a meaningful way?