Digital Edginess requires leaders that understand emergent change

The barriers to shift to a collaborative approach are enormous, if time is not taken to be respectful of each person’s opinion around the table.  It also requires time to be reflective. With a goal to launch quicker, it doesn’t always bring about the best conditions to reflect and bring about ‘quick to follow’ improvements to be launched back out to market.

Are you able to move fast and reflect?

In a recent meeting with some IT leaders, who typically use a waterfall approach to product development, I recognized a large misstep on behalf of the business. When the leaders spoke about the business’s desire to move to agile framework so they could get to market quicker. 

Many of the IT leaders expressed their apprehension in having the business direct the approach to projects as ‘they don’t understand what is possible with our systems’.  On the flip side, many around the table were constricted in their thinking as they had lost the desire to think about the ‘(im)possible’.

The shift to solve wicked problems can only come from true collaboration and the ability to join in IT’s sandbox (and not trying to direct what is built). Including unexpected opinions in the discussion, fosters new thoughts to begin to emerge and as these thoughts emerge (and are respected), new ideas will begin to shine through.

As Cialdini (2001) suggests, we need to put influence in front.  To transition to a leader with digital edginess, you need to influence a new way of thinking.  Agile development is not new and neither is collaboration. Add in a group of business leaders who are aware of the (im)possible with technology and you will have a room of leaders that can bring about solutions to ‘wicked problems’ (Argysis, 2007). 

So why are many leaders missing this opportunity?  Is it their fear to let go of control, their ego or their past ideologies to success?  To gain that competitive edginess, we need leaders that evolve their thinking while new information comes forward and always trying to transform what they have into something currently unknown but better.

Based on my major research paper, I suggested that non-B2C companies (e.g. RIM) have leadership who hold on too long to their belief that their end consumer is the business and their product alignment with the buyer’s (corporations’) needs (e.g. tight security, people’s desire for a hard keyboard) misaligns to the greater voice of consumers (that is amplified through social media avenues).  The focus needs to shift away from B2B to understand the power of the consumer voice in tomorrow’s choices.

Is your leadership team prepared for the new eco-system that is evolving? Do you have a sense of how mobile technology will shift your placement in the eco-system?  Are you prepared to bring in that new technology that will completely disrupt your stable organization?

Change is discontinuous and new technology is hitting the market and changing the landscape faster than ever (IBM Disrputive Technologies, 2012) — how is your leadership team preparing?

#LeadershipEmergentChangeDigitalEdginess