It requires that companies become what we call digital masters. Digital masters cultivate two capabilities: digital capability, which enables them to use innovative technologies to improve elements of the business, and leadership capability, which enables them to envision and drive organizational change in systematic and profitable ways. Together, these two capabilities allow a company to transform digital technology into business advantage.
We found that the elements of leadership capability have endured, but new elements of digital capability have come to the fore.
While strong leadership capability is even more essential than ever, its core elements — vision, engagement, and governance — are not fundamentally changed, though they are informed by recent innovations. The elements of digital capability, on the other hand, have been more profoundly altered by the rapid technological advances of recent years.
Experience design: Customer experience has become the ultimate battleground for many companies and brands.
Customer intelligence: Integrating customer data across silos and understanding customer behavior
Emotional engagement: Emotional connections with customers are as essential as technology in creating compelling customer experiences.
As ever, well-managed operations are essential to converting revenue into profit, but now we’re seeing a shift in the focus of digital transformation in this arena.
Core process automation: Amazon’s distribution centers deliver inventory to workers rather than sending workers to collect inventory. Rio Tinto, an Australian mining company, uses autonomous trucks, trains, and drilling machinery so that it can shift workers to less dangerous tasks, leading to higher productivity and better safety.
Connected and dynamic operations: Thanks to the growing availability of cheap sensors, cloud infrastructure, and machine learning, concepts such as Industry 4.0, digital threads, and digital twins have become a reality. Digital threads connecting machines, models, and processes provide a single source of truth to manage, optimize, and enhance processes from requirements definition through maintenance.
Data-driven decision-making: from backward-looking reports to real-time data. Now, connected devices, new machine learning algorithms, smarter experimentation, and plentiful data enable more-informed decisions.
Transforming Employee Experience
Augmentation: Warnings that robots will replace humans have given way to a more nuanced and productive discussion.
Workers in Huntington Ingalls Industries’ shipyard use augmented reality to help build giant complex vessels such as aircraft carriers and submarines. They can “see” where to route wires or pipes or what is behind a wall before they start drilling into it.
Future-readying: providing employees with the skills they need to keep up with the pace of change. In the past few years, this has given rise to new models of managing learning and development in organizations, led by a new kind of chief learning officer, whom we call the transformer CLO
Flexforcing: To respond to fast-paced digital opportunities and threats, companies also need to build agility into their talent sourcing systems. As automation and AI applications take over tasks once performed by humans, some companies are multiskilling employees to make the organization more agile.
Transforming Business Models
three elements supporting business model transformation: digital enhancements, information-based service extensions, and multisided platforms.
When employees feel they can’t trust their boss, they feel unsafe, like no one has their back, and then spend more energy on survival than performing at their job.
“The Rise Fund is committed to achieving social and environmental impact alongside competitive financial returns.”
We all say that “leadership matters.” But only after I began leading a team and a company did I realize how deeply the actions and statements of a leader matter. Organizations echo and amplify the strengths and weaknesses of the people in charge. Leaders set a tone for the company.
The credibility of an organization reflects the credibility of its leader. That’s frightening power. And so everyone who works for an organization or group should demand that leaders put the broader good ahead of what has become known as “privilege.”
We asked 11 people to highlight lessons learned from their favorite managers. No matter what kind of boss you have right now, you can apply these valuable pieces of advice in your own career.
1. Own Your Work
“If she told me how to do it, I would rely on her for every assignment, expecting a 1-2-3 step guide. She was training me to be independent, self-motivated, and take pride in my work,” Chocha says.2. Remember the Goal
Rural school leaders have some of the most complex, multifaceted jobs in education. They also have some of the highest turnover. Half of all new principals quit their jobs within three years, according to a 2014 study. A national survey released in July found that principals in rural school districts are even less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to stay at their school the following year and more likely to leave the profession altogether. The schools they preside over, meanwhile, often struggle with persistent poverty, low college-going rates and extreme racial disparities in student outcomes.
Navigating politics and learning to let go of past responsibilities were among the most unexpected aspects of their positions
Richard Carranza — Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
I’ve been principal in two different schools in two different states, so my heart’s really in the classroom, in the schools themselves. But it’s important that if anybody’s going to become a superintendent, you realize that you also have a good array of political issues that you’re going to have to deal with, [from] elected officials [and] individuals that are not elected but have considerable political clout and could affect the initiatives or agenda that you have.
Suzanne Lacey — Superintendent, Talladega County Schools
a thing I struggled with the most was just letting go of the jobs that I had done before.
Glenn Robbins — Superintendent, Tabernacle Township School District
“No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.” An organization is either run by visionaries or operators. Which are you?
Leadership is a privilege. Serve others each day with a positive attitude. How strong are your relationships with not only your board of education and administrative team, but also the teachers association? Relationships and communication are first. Everything else comes second.
Stay true to the district’s goals and values. Remember to embrace the infinite game, and not chase the external finite game. Focus within, not external. Coach, mentor, support and challenge. Be the leader that creates more leaders, not produces more soldiers.
1.Decreased Productivity – When a manager is constantly looking over their employees’ shoulders, it can lead to a lot of second-guessing and paranoia, and ultimately leads to dependent employees. Additionally, such managers spends a lot of time giving input and tweaking employee workflows, which can drastically slow down employee response time.
2. Reduced Innovation – When employees feel like their ideas are invalid or live in constant fear of criticism, it’s eventually going to take a toll on creativity. In cultures where risk-taking is punished, employees will not dare to take the initiative. Why think outside the box when your manager is only going to shoot down your ideas and tell you to do it their way?
3. Lower Morale – Employees want the feeling of autonomy. If employees cannot make decisions at all without their managers input, they will feel suffocated. Employees that are constantly made to feel they can’t do anything right may try harder for a while, but will eventually stop trying at all. The effects of this will be evident in falling employee engagement levels.
4. High Staff Turnover – Most people don’t take well to being micromanaged. When talented employees are micromanaged, they often do one thing; quit. No one likes to come to work every day and feel they are walking into a penitentiary with their every movement being monitored. “Please Micromanage Me” Said No Employee ever. I have never seen a happy staff under micromanagement.
5. Loss of Trust – Micromanagement will eventually lead to a massive breakdown of trust. It demotivates and demoralizes employees. Your staff will no longer see you as a manager, but a oppressor whose only job is to make their working experience miserable.
Micromanaging is the opposite of empowerment and it creates toxic work environments. It chokes the growth of the employee and the organization and fosters mediocrity.
If you want performance at scale: Select the right people, provide them with the proper training, tools and support, and then give them room to get the job done!
