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 managing a team. I also found as my own responsibilities grew, it became clear that I needed to keep developing not just myself and my immediate team, but also the other teams that we were supporting. I found that knowledge transfer alone wasn’t enough but there was a need to set up processes and find ways to point the team in the right direction. This way, the 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 then 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 and tech. I was doing something not dissimilar for another organisation prior to founding Digital Skills Agency. When that business broke down, I decided that was the right time to start my own and wanted 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?
I was the Operations Director for a UK managed services business, I think 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 economy that was signed off by my board. I also managed to secure £1,000,000 loan from the bank at a time when the banks weren’t lending money to anyone at all. Funnily enough, I think I actually used these examples in support of my IML Chartered Manager accreditation application a few years back.
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 I’m not seeing necessarily a digital capability gap in organisations. But 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 – which may or may not surprise you.
On the more digital side of things, there is broadly a gap in a good understanding of data and process flows and teams. So obviously the more IT technical teams tend to see these, but certainly as we see business units trying to adopt AI, trying to take advantage of ways to automate some of the 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. Of course, a central part to adopting AI is the data itself. One thing that we’ve seen through the events that we’re running and the feedback that we’re receiving. I think that understanding of data management and governance is a big issue and understanding of what the tools can do with it is really big 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 need to use in their current role and more skills than necessarily their manager or team even know about. There’s a massive set of untapped skills and we’ve seen that’s one of the reasons why people sometimes leave organisations – they can’t put their skills to use. So, knowing where those skills are is itself a skill that’s worth investing in.
But thinking about leaders, I think digital fluency is something I would pick up. The ability to leverage digital technologies and practices and lead the thinking and problem-solving of that 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 tapping into those experts. That awareness of the ability to integrate that potential into problem solving, I think, is that’s going to be a really key factor that’s not going anywhere.
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. Your experience and other people’s experience of you is what counts. The knowledge is great, but people’s 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 learn. Try different ways of learning, whether its experience based online, or in a book and make it a habit that you don’t stop.
How would you best describe your leadership philosophy?
For me, I think you just have to keep learning. The most persistent thing is being authentically human and building the team. I’m not perfect, I don’t expect my team to be perfect. We all have our own strengths, our own challenges. When you see that and you recognise that, then I think the value of the team is almost self-apparent. You can support each other, you can 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 thing without diminishing your colleagues. You’re also able to lean on each other and recognise the expertise of others and support others.
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. I as a guide, 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 wear an advisory hat on the one hand and wear a leadership hat on the other. But I try and do both of them within my own team.
Do you have any book or podcast recommendations?
Podcast: ‘The Knowledge Project’ which is by Shane Parrish from Farnham Street.
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?
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, both in businesses but also in not for profits and in land.
- Elizabeth Holmes, who does this disgraced CEO of Theranos. Let’s go back to a time before we all knew that Theranos was a fraud fictitious scenario. I’m curious how she convinced the directors of Theranos. Would I have been fooled? I mean, Bill Gates, I don’t think invested, but you know, would he have been fooled if we sat then down at 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, but I always valued his advice.
