Leadership @ Digital Speed

In the digital era and information age, organisations are striving for speed, agility and the ability to be innovative. To achieve this, companies are investing heavily in new technologies; restructuring their people; redesigning their offices and taking onboard all kinds of high brow consultancy services in an attempt to 'change things up'. 

I have seen some pretty cool offices in my time.... mostly glass windowed playgrounds with treehouse themed meeting rooms and beer fridges. I've also seen some pretty 'interesting' organisation structures too... one company had an actual team of people called DevOps (the irony was not lost on me ;-) 

Moreover, I have been personally involved in a bunch of multi-million-pound software rollouts as well as some very ambitious cloud migrations. In some instances, I have watched as organisations lift and shift their monolithic legacy applications (as is) directly into the cloud so that they become more 'agile' (eeek). In fact, I have even witnessed some very large and reputable enterprises sell entire datacenters to third parties and call this 'arrangement' their cloud strategy... All of this and more done in the name of the much pursued 'digital transformation' objective. 



I am not saying that any of the above was unnecessary per say - as it is absolutely necessary for organisations to invest in their people, facilities and technology. However, the one vital ingredient that the majority of these organisations seem to overlook is actually an ingredient that can not simply be purchased or coded and deployed in a few sprints... (perhaps this is why it is overlooked?)

This magical but mistakenly much-maligned, ingredient is called... trust.

(Blockchain nerds may be sneering at their screens as they read this and I concede that the blockchain may well be a way to protocolise and automate trust in the future but in the meantime, I am talking about 'manual, real-world trust' that exists between human beings - in family ties, in friendships and business relationships. Humour me ;-)

Trust is a fragile and elusive beast - particularly in business. Trust takes time to build between individuals and in order for that trust to spread across an organisation, it requires a compatible and consistent cultural framework that is unconditionally supported by all of its participants whilst being actively championed by its leadership. 

Trust is the foundation for creating an open and safe environment where people can explore the outer limits of their potential and creativity because this is where the competition is now folks - at the outer edges of knowledge work. 

Let's face it... computing is now cheap and very accessible in relative terms. This well-known fact is the very reason we have all of this digital disruption. You simply don't have to have bags of money and an army of people to build a successful businesses anymore. The winners in the digital age are definitively the thinkers, those that dare to be different. Those that are able to come up with new ideas and executive without distraction or having to pay homage to legacy ways of thinking are literally changing the way we live our lives. 

Source: Harvard Business Review

A well-known management consultant called Peter Drucker had been anticipating this monumental leap – to an age when people would generate value with their minds more than with their muscle – since at least 1959, when in Landmarks of Tomorrow he first described the rise of “knowledge work.” Three decades later, Drucker had become convinced that knowledge was a more crucial economic resource than land, labour, or financial assets, leading to what he called a “post-capitalist society.” And shortly thereafter (and not long before he died in 2005), Drucker declared that increasing the productivity of knowledge workers was “the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century".

If you are good at knowledge work or good at optimising this across teams of people, you are probably building (or operating) a highly successful digital business... more importantly, I bet you trust the people you work with. 

Trust underpins everything we do in life, it is the foundation from which everything else is achieved. The more trust we have in our environments and the people we share them with, the faster we will move and the more risks we will take in the pursuit of 'changing things up'.

Simon Sinek coins this beautifully in his TED talk about 'why good leaders make you feel safe' 

When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen.

People do not explore their potential with a gun to their head or nestled in the small of their back. Sure, under duress, people will do as you tell them to do... but they will not reach into themselves and find that something extra or special that your team needs to compete. Creativity is not something that can be forced or managed. 

Many organisations struggle to get the balance right between creativity and execution, which is odd because they are in fact entirely different beasts and very distinguishable. However, I will admit that due to the speed of progress we are seeing with digital, the two do need to work symbiotically with one another and as a result, the lines are blurring (agile development methodologies are a case in point). Simply put, creative people need to be able to execute and likewise, people who are good at execution need to know when to be creative (or at least stop executing so that creativity has room to happen). It's not easy to get right, especially with an array of different personalities trying to collaborate with one another.

This where we have to start looking at our people differently. People are not just assets on an accounting ledger or a headcount spreadsheet they are the difference between your organisation and the next. People are the very reason anyone decides to get into Leadership... 

If you see leadership as a way to make more money or to minimize your own risk, you will make a terrible leader and whilst there are plenty of terrible leaders out there, the comforting fact is that digital transformation is exposing the archaic and backward management methodologies that make so many people unhappy in their work. Leaders who are trustworthy and create trust-filled environments will create innovative and competitive teams ready for digital speeds.

I am not saying that trustworthy leaders always produce perfect results or that the untrustworthy ones always fail - it can sometimes be quite the opposite. In fact, being totally transparent, trust-filled environments actually encourage mistakes and failure... yes... this is a good thing... trust me :-) 

(think of it like parenting...) 

(Anyway, I am rambling a bit now so I will try concluding...) 

Bottom line: People are awesome and good leaders spend their time and energy working out how to unlock and maximise the awesomeness that exists in each and everyone that chooses to dedicate their precious time and energy to the organisation's mission. Digital leaders entrust and they empower their people to 'change things up' because if they don't, the good talent will simply leave and find a place where these ingredients are more prevalent. 


Thanks for reading... 

Chancey