Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
Subscribe to Arthur D. Little's Culture & Leadership Newsletter
Insight
Teams composed of business and technology professionals should identify problems and opportunities together. The era of top-down autocratic control is over. Teams with deep knowledge of technology and business models and processes should perform the tasks listed in this Advisor to generate credibility and trust.
With Russia's intention to assert data sovereignty by requiring all firms to keep data and systems in Russia, and many other countries already requiring this or quickly following suit, we are seeing what I expected a few years back: nations exerting control over their cyber infrastructures and using corporate IT infrastructure as a means to thwart competing nations. While techno-optimists usually equate IT with democratization, I am not sure despotic or even democratic rulers think the same.
In June 2014, I discussed some of the possibilities the commercial use of drones offers. Since then, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), after several years of study, has finally issued proposed guidelines for the commercial use of drones in the US. Moreover, the FAA appears to be more receptive to commercial drone usage, and we are now seeing an increase in their use by companies, government agencies, and researchers.
As we explore in this Executive Update, the problem that cross-training solves is the natural creation of islands of expertise and its consequences. While some people certainly need to be experts, cross-training problems occur at a lower level.
In this Executive Update, Sheila Q. Cox reveals the three essential steps for effective delegation.
Security in the IT realm is a very complex issue to deal with, largely because the very attributes that create vulnerabilities are the main creators of value for individual users, businesses, and society itself. Just as the value of a network increases as the square of the number of nodes on that network, so too does the probability of a bad actor exploiting the network to his or her own ends.
To sell ideas effectively, you must think of your partners as customers, adopt a sales mindset, understand the sales process, and develop strong communication skills. Understanding people's needs and connecting what you want to accomplish to what they need will help you reach your goal. In doing so, your IT organization will become more effective in getting others to listen to, accept, and act on your ideas.
Everyone is in sales, and the IT organization is no exception. As we discuss in the accompanying Executive Report, the challenge is that many of the technical people in IT organizations have never been trained in sales skills, don't feel comfortable with these skills, and even regard the concept of selling as distasteful.