Leading Change as the New Norm – The Priority Leadership Attribute for 2015

Photo Credit: daDa © 2014

“Things that should happen don’t and things that don’t happen that should”.  Donald Winnicott talking about the early infant development that requires external environmental influences (support, collaboration, nurturing etc) to ‘adapt’ to their world in order to develop the skills for their future path most appropriately.

I can start this blog by listing out the reasons to explain both the need and urgency for business leaders and businesses to adapt to change and adopt the skills to manage change.

The rate of technology, Digital Disruption (I will leave the opinion of that phrase out of this blog!), changes in demographics, consumer demands changing….

That everything is changing is pretty much understood and agreed by most business leaders. What is not understood or outlined with enough clarity perhaps is that this change is both increasing in speed and in velocity – so the urgency is not about change management being a single project where you can procure the services of an expert individual or organisation to effect on your behalf – the urgency is that leading change as an attribute has become arguably one of the most important attributes a business leader should display – and equally change management as a capability and delivery skill at a management level is required to ensure that this change happens.

Leading change as the new norm is very different to leading change is the new norm.  Why?  Because it’s about consistency, repeatability and something that is a normal consideration within the daily life of a leader.  Not something we do in isolation, when all the forces are in place and the consensus is that a single, possible large investment project has been singled out by the business as a priority.

Leading change as the new norm is about understanding that those key forces that once did require single change projects to adapt to the corresponding shift as a result no longer work.  Take technology as an example, or a key customer behaviour change, or a significant change in demographic…we’ve had all of them before and economies and industries have adopted new ways of doing things to address them.  Today we have a different paradigm, we have change happening in each of these areas and more happening all the time, overlapping, influencing, disrupting.  As business leaders, managers and businesses generally, if we do not have the ability to see these changes, have the ability to assess these changes and subsequently act upon these changes as we see fit, then the Darwinism effect comes into play – those that survive will be those that adapt to their environments, those that don’t will perish.

Is it scaremongering to say Adapt or Die?  Is it spin-doctor narrative that talks about the need to be a Digital Leader?  I don’t think so.  So much so that in my previous blog I talk about leadership in a digital age rather than the rise of a digital leader per se.

This shouldn’t be new news to us – as far back as 2002 the following theoretical paper was published on Digital Leadership “LEADERSHIP IN THE DIGITAL AGE” Ernest J. Wilson III

Stating that as we move from an industrial age to a knowledge or networked/connected age Wilson states "Leadership in the Digital Age needs new attitudes, new skills, and new knowledge."

In many respects the honeymoon period is over.  The rise of the CDO and Digital Leader has a place in the business world to transition us from managing single shifts to managing multiple shifts as part of daily life, but the urgency is really to widen the net, to start to build and support these skills and capabilities required to see, assess, act and thrive with change, so that we become businesses that have many adaptive leaders, not just one.

2015 is going to be a big year.  Businesses that haven’t yet grasped the fundamentals of ‘digital business’ are already on the back foot.  The building blocks of a digital business are having the infrastructure and understanding of social engagement, the ability to access and assess data, a move to more agile technology infrastructures and cloud services and of course, an effective exploitation of the mobile opportunity.  Just to be aware of these is not enough anymore, these foundation blocks have to be in place to start to take advantage of the more subtle technologies available like gamification and augmented reality as well as the more disruptive and game changing technologies like Internet of Things, Wearables and Robotics.   Any business wanting to really take advantage of these maturing digital world elements have to have the foundation blocks in place to succeed.  Surely that’s a huge hint to anyone wanting to build a digital strategy.

What does leading change as the new norm really mean – aside from the obvious?  What skills, capabilities and attributes are required?

Put simply, leading change as the new norm requires the ability to vision and direct constant change and often effect multiple change at once.  Leading change requires the ability to address the human aspect as well as the business aspect.  It is no longer enough to lead or manage by monitoring hard numbers; leaders now need to understand the importance of the human aspect more than ever before.

The human aspect of digital business can be thought of in three ways:  Empowerment, Independence & Transparency

Empowerment – the ability to try and test new things, to make decisions based upon the access of data and the understanding of parameters, an understanding of change as an enabler not an inhibitor.

Independence – the ability to self learn, and to grow independently.

Transparency – ensuring that access to data and the communication of intent is a business priority rather than a secondary consideration – letting people know…letting people know becomes the primary consideration for a leader of change as the new norm; a leader in a digital world.

For too long now leaders and managers have built and managed businesses through spreadsheets and numbers.  Now businesses that succeed are being built and managed by a focus on engagement, loyalty and the presence of those leadership attributes described above.

To ensure businesses are able to thrive in a digital world a new breed of leadership is urgently needed.  This needs to happen in two ways, existing leaders must not fear, shy away or ignore the need to do things differently to succeed in different times.  New and upcoming leaders should embrace the generation they belong to and adopt those positive open, social and change blasting attributes in their leadership ethos.

If you are a business leader or aspire to become one in today’s digital world you must ensure that supporting and nurturing the ability to lead and manage change as the new norm becomes your number 1 priority for personal development and the development of those leaders and managers around you.  This coupled with the business basics mentioned earlier will equip any leader or leadership team with the key ingredients to thrive in this digital world.  These are the leaders and businesses that will succeed.  It really is time to adapt or die!

In my next post I will be talking about the maturity of Digital Transformation as it moves from the delivery of a single change project to a constant stream of transformations which we term; Adaptiveness.

Painting a clear picture for your business to thrive in a digital world.

Insights RSS

At last, businesses can join the digital dots and create effective adaptive strategies to succeed in this post industrial world.

It can be argued that where most businesses are today is through no fault of their own.  If you think about the growth and hype around Mobile, Social, Data and Cloud, you’ll find a vendor heavy landscape flocking to provide products and services to specific functional areas of the business around one of the above.  What you find quickly is a picture full of tactical and siloed decisions and strategies that lead to short term gain without really providing solutions to the business which will help them become adaptive and holistically competent to deal with the pace of change and new consumer demands. 

It’s pretty safe to say that the professional services industry, or management consultancies have been slow off the mark to promote and provide services around digital strategies.  Usually when a transformational change happens, a ‘change agent’, there tends to be a consultancy shift towards support services to deal with that change as a result. We might not embrace the traditional management consulting model for a variety of reasons but when they do engage and take note of a shift, the result is copious amounts of surveys and research, swiftly followed by recommendations promoting new models and frameworks to herald the dawn of a new service industry. Yes of course, in this case we are talking about Digital Transformation.

Let’s just take a step back in time to look at how we got to where so many businesses find themselves today, still siloed with presence of digital visible but either ad hoc or tactical at best.  Only a few businesses can really say they are embracing the full potential that digital has to offer the audience experience and the resultant business success awarded to those who can look outward and forward, those who can adapt to a changing environment moment by moment – always refining the audience experience to deliver business objectives.  As an example let’s look at ACME Co. (only because I used to love The Roadrunner on TV!).  As a business they have been adopting various aspects of Cloud, Mobile, Social and Data but mainly in silo; essentially trying to embed channel shift. Why? Because on the surface this seems the best way to cope with the new and evolving environment, especially with lack of understanding or buy in at a senior level.  So, channel shift serves a purpose, providing some evidence of success but invariably the audience experience falls short in specific areas and there is an increasing pressure on internal systems, competency and capability.

Around 2011/2012 a tipping point occurs. For whatever reason, be it market analysis, boardroom buy in, a growing confidence in digital spend – we see the big consultancies officially launch a new service industry; ‘Digital Transformation’. For the first time, a customer-focused approach at a business level emerges and a new mindset and wave of thinking begins to bubble up.  Coupled with the dawn of digital disruption and the millennial consumer, hindsight shows us something huge and globally relevant was taking place – we just didn’t think it was happening to us right?

Since 2012, Digital Transformation has grown exponentially, as a term, as an industry, as a mindset.

But for us the story doesn’t stop there.  A silent shift from consumer to audience has taken place – all driven from the digital opportunity.  What this means is that businesses everywhere must look to define and refine the audience experience across all 4 corners of the business:  Customer, Employee, Supply Chain and Stakeholder.  Dealing with the audience holistically means a pretty big deal for any business small or large, public or private. 

• You need to break down barriers so that the audience journey can be mapped and refined holistically.

• You need to get buy in from the whole senior leadership team, not just the CEO – yes they should endorse and mandate the business wide change but more support is needed to drive it home.

• You need a pretty good situation analysis of your current competency and capability to adapt.

• You must ensure that digital doesn’t become either a point to point change programme or a bolt on to your current business strategy: you want a journey that starts but never ends and a business strategy that embraces digital.

• You need guts. Not just in one person, that’s not enough, find the people with the guts to try, the guts to drive, the guts to risk and the guts to vision a future.

• Don’t think your thinking stops at the business strategy – for this to succeed you need to ensure that there is a strategic focus on culture, which means communications and people. Bring those who lead these areas on board at the start to ensure inclusion, adoption and a basic belief that change for good can be achieved.

Heed this warning:  If you are reading this blog, great, but if you are reading it with a half-hearted attitude you’re likely in trouble already.  If you are still thinking mobile, cloud, social and data, raise the alarm within your business immediately, these are the forefathers of the modern digital business, they are the building blocks of your future so get them right now.  Why the scaremongering?  Well we are fast moving into the next phase of the modern digital business, that of ‘things’ and machines.  Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms are gaining breakthroughs every day. And it doesn’t stop there.  These aspects are already here, around us, part of our lives making connections and creating opportunity, forever new connections that will bare the fruit of a new phase and a new phase beyond that and beyond that.  

During a recent conversation with a global business leader he mentioned that the leaders of tomorrow will be those who can look forward and outward.  This really resonated with us as a team and as an organisation that provides the support to help businesses and people adapt to this constantly evolving landscape of connections, made possible through digital.

Think forward and outward.  Look beyond your current vision to where your audiences will be tomorrow.  As the pace of change becomes ever faster, tomorrow might well be here.

So here is a quick summary of where we think we are today:

1. Businesses are not stupid, they know they need to address the digital revolution but they don’t necessarily know how urgent it really is or what it might look like to do something about it. 

2. The view of the future is already becoming a reality; those who are only addressing channel shift are behind the curve. Just look to Moore’s Law to see that the future is coming so fast, it’ll hit you when you least expect it.

3. Disruptors will continue to enter markets and industries. It is predicted in 10 years, 40% of the Fortune 500 will no longer exist (Source: Socialnomics), so start to look beyond your current line of vision to influences that might impact your very existence.

4. People matter more than ever, but not just what they can do and how they do it, it’s becoming more about how they think and how they feel.  Treat your audiences with the respect you would expect from another human being – that’s the power of digital.

5. There isn’t any area of the current corporate structure that’s immune.  This revolution doesn’t discriminate it will demand change across every industry, every size of business, private, public and charity…it really will turn into a Tsunami.

Maybe it really is about adapting or dying...