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.

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Insight

Abstract

Negotiations become more challenging during economic hard times.

As you may have noticed, the current economic environment is causing people to behave differently. This stressful climate has likely changed the tenor of your negotiations by either making it easier for you to get what you want or making it near impossible to achieve your goals.

So maybe it's just the people I hang around with, or maybe it's just me, but my radar about what's being said between the lines is getting keener and keener. Communications professionals have long sensitized us to the elements of effective communication, which always includes insight and attention to the sender, the message, the channel, and the receiver.

For leaders of corporations, risk management has become a top concern in the face of increasing demand for greater corporate accountability as well as world events that have changed the risk landscape and its impact on the business world.

Every so often, I like to revisit some of the threads of thought that wove themselves into the agile movement. One of these is complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory, which could be considered a science of adaptation. CAS concepts, found in several agile methods, are an important backdrop to many agile principles and practices.

Anyone who has been in the work force more than a matter of weeks has had the experience. You think you know what management wants. You believe you're working in the organization's best interests. You want to show some measure of independence and personal vision. And you act. No sooner do you show just a modicum of initiative, you are crushed like a grape!

The 3.8% contraction in gross domestic product (GDP) for the fourth quarter of last year, while better than the 5.5% contraction that economists had been predicting, was still not good news. Why? Inventories increased. If you account for those increased inventories, GDP shrank 5.1%.

Performing some IT and communications tasks through internal or external means is not a technological decision; in fact, it is one that focuses on business, and it needs to be framed within the company's general organizational strategy. The reasons that a CIO confronts this dilemma can vary, but they usually involve company pressure to reduce costs, concern for fighting hardware obsolescence, and an intention to reduce the organizational structure. However, there is much more.