We recently sat down with Daniel Merriott CPMgr CMgr FIML, Managing Director of Digital Skills Agency New Zealand. In this interview, Daniel shares his passion for learning and continuous growth at all stages of his career and dives into the key digital skills leaders need to be developing as we head towards the new year.
Can you share your leadership journey and the origin of the Digital Skills Agency?
Absolutely, my first formal management position was at the BBC back in the UK in an IT management role, which was pretty interesting. I realised very quickly that being technically right wasn’t the only key to success in leading a team, I needed to navigate the relationships and politics of an organisation like the BBC. I also found as my own responsibilities grew, that I needed to keep developing not just myself and my immediate team, but also the other teams around us. I found that knowledge transfer alone wasn’t enough but there was a need to set up processes, support curiosity and exploration and whilst finding ways to point the team in the right direction. This way, the broader team were learning things we needed to know in advance, while growing their own expertise. That started my journey into becoming less of a manager and more of a leader and from that point, growing capability became an ongoing theme throughout my career.
I’m quite lucky to have found a niche that I really love working in, which is people and digital/tech. I was doing something not dissimilar for another organisation prior to founding Digital Skills Agency 7 years ago. When that business exited the region, I decided that was the right time to start my own company and wanted to build a business focused on New Zealand. It gave me an opportunity to put my own spin and my own shape on that too, part of that was being deliberately very people focused.
What has been a career highlight for you?
During my time as the Operations Director for a UK managed services business, just after the Global Financial Crisis in 2009, I managed to put together a plan to help us grow. Despite everything that was going on in the post-GFC economy, it was signed off by my board. As part of that plan, I also managed to secure a £1,000,000 loan from the bank at a time when the banks weren’t lending money to anyone at all. I haven’t thought about that in a while, but funnily enough, I think I actually used this in support of my IML Chartered Manager accreditation application several years ago.
What are the biggest digital capability gaps you’re seeing across organisations right now?
The focus of our work is on New Zealand, but we’ve worked both across the Tasman and internationally too and probably the most important gap we see in organisations isn’t digital, it’s actually making sure that people leaders have got the skills to develop and grow their team, not just the skills to lead delivery of the work. This particular capability gap is at the heart of so many of the challenges we see in our work.
On the more digital side of things, across many teams and departments we notice a common theme is a lack of a good understanding of data and process flows. The more IT technical teams tend to be more comfortable with this, but certainly as we see business units trying to adopt AI, trying to take advantage of ways to automate some of their processes, the thing that seems to let them down is a lack of understanding of their own processes and the data that their processes are using. Something that we’ve seen through the events that we’re running and feedback within our work is that there seems to be a limited understanding of data management and governance, which is a big issue. Ultimately this should be informing and shaping the approach to AI adoption and understanding what the tools can do too.
What do you see as the most important digital skills that leaders will need in 2026?
We’ve conducted capability assessments across organisations of all sizes and industries, and we generally find a lot of people have more skills than they get to use in their current role, and sometimes more skills than their manager or team even know about. There’s a massive set of untapped skills. It’s well-known that that is one of the reasons why people sometimes leave organisations – they can’t put their skills to use. So, knowing where those skills are and how to tap into them is itself a skill that’s worth investing in.
Thinking about leaders, digital fluency is something I would pick up. The ability to leverage digital technologies and practices, and lead the thinking and problem-solving that leverages new tools and approaches is very important. Not that every solution needs to be a digital solution, but for those where digital gets involved, it can transform how activities happen. It’s not necessarily about needing to have the expertise yourself but knowing that there are different ways to find solutions and being able to leverage those experts. The awareness of the ability to integrate that potential into problem solving, I think, is a key factor that will continue to be important.
What is some advice you have for emerging professionals?
I would advise emerging professionals to think about building your network and developing your reputation and other people’s trust in you early on. Your experience and other people’s experience of you is what counts. Building knowledge is great, but actual lived experience tends to trump lots of things. So go out and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way, find ways to help others and absolutely care deeply about the quality of your work because that will be remembered. The next thing I would suggest is learn how to enjoy learning. Try different ways of learning, whether its experience based, online, or in a book, put what you learn to use and make it a habit that you don’t stop.
How would you best describe your leadership philosophy?
The most persistent thing is being authentically human and building the team. I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect my team to be perfect. We all have our own strengths, our own challenges. I like us to support each other, to lean on each other, whether that’s to cover a little bit of work or provide expertise. You can shine and be an expert in a topic without diminishing your colleagues. I also encourage the team to advise each other and recognise the expertise of others and support others. When you see that and experience that working well for yourself, then I think the value of building the team becomes self-apparent.
As for the second part of that, we spend a lot of our time in an advisory capacity. I think I would say my leadership style there is less about being a leader with followers and more about being a guide. Leaders have authority, guides are trusted. You have to earn that trust and presumably have expertise to back that up. As a guide, I help shape direction, but I don’t set it; I help people navigate for themselves, but I’m not necessarily the one who lays out the path to follow. I have an advisory role on the one hand and a leadership role I need to play on the other. Without my own team I try and do both, and maintaining the right balance is part of my ongoing learning.
Do you have any book or podcast recommendations?
Podcast: ‘The Knowledge Project’ which is by Shane Parrish from Farnham Street. Shane’s ability to distill learnings from leaders across a huge range of topics makes for great listening.
Books: ‘9 Lies About Work’ by Marcus Buckingham is well worth a read and played a role in shaping my thinking as well as ‘Humanocracy’ by Gary Hamel.
Who are three leaders both past and present that you would like to have dinner with?
Of the questions you sent me this is the question I spent the most time thinking about!
- Bill Gates an obvious pick, but honestly not for his time at Microsoft. I’m more interested in his vision of the future and how he sees climate change shaping his investments in businesses, land and also in the not for profits he supports.
- Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced CEO of Theranos. Not an example I want to follow, but I’m keen to learn from the mistakes. Let’s go back to a time before we all knew that Theranos was a fraud. I’m curious how she convinced the directors and investors of Theranos. Would I have been fooled? Bill Gates, I don’t think invested, but would he have been persuaded if we were all sat down together at the dinner table?
- The third choice is probably more of a nostalgic one. My old boss’s boss at the BBC, a chap called Bill Possle. He was the archetype of wise, but he was also a person of action. In my time at BBC, I had very limited interactions with him before he retired, and in my early years I was still learning how to engage senior leaders, but I always valued his advice. I wonder what his advice for me might be now? It’d be interesting too to see what questions he would ask of Elizabeth Holmes over a shared dinner.
