What does digital do to leadership?

‘Digital’ is a Mindset

Digital leadership is a mindset and approach as much as it is to do with technology, so let’s start there. Digital leadership is about an adaptive mindset; the ability to adapt to fluctuating circumstances and to change course based on new information. Everyone is experiencing this on fast forward right now. Being in an adaptive state means leaders who are always ready to flex. Learning agility is therefore essential for adaptive leadership. If leaders are to keep pace with what’s going on they have to be flexible and responsive in light of new data and able to make decisions, not find themselves ‘stuck’ where the data is unclear or absent.

Words like ‘flux’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘emergence’ are key in the digital leadership vocabulary. These are the words replacing the more fixed, rigid certainties of the traditional leadership lexicon. We are no longer talking about leaders setting a steady course and bringing followers along a well-defined roadmap. Instead, the digital environment requires leaders to be comfortable with holding onto more questions than answers and managing where the constants are ‘complexity’ and ‘uncertainty’. The digital environment requires leaders to be able to navigate multiple possible paths, to link learning from each path to other paths and then find a way forward.  So, digital means the kind leadership which is cut loose from the umbilical cord of ‘known entities’ and of familiar precedent.

Emergence over Certainty

There is a huge difference between a process driven world view, orientated around confirming what is known, and a digital, purpose led world that is populated with emergent questions. So how many of our long-established leadership skills like communication, vision setting, strategic thinking, listening and data driven decision making can we, or should we, hang onto in this more dynamic digital age? And how much of what we think about leadership needs to change in light of our new digital reality? What does ‘good’ look like through a digital lens?

Having spent a significant portion of my career in digital transformation and innovation and latterly in capability building for executive teams asking this question, here are some ‘digital first’ leadership capabilities emerging right now. Clearly the global Covid -19 pandemic has accelerated many digital conversations and practices by necessity. This rapid digitisation feels like crisis management to some and thriving to others. Wherever you sit on the spectrum from surviving to thriving, learning some leadership lessons in this emergent context will have a half-life benefit for digital leaders going forward.

Eco system thinking

Eco system thinking is about holding multiple ‘potential’ and emergent notions at the same time without needing to centre on ‘the first right idea’. Eco system thinking is about taking into account multiple, connected pathways and co-dependencies, coexisting and interdependent. Few people, teams or organisations operate in isolation, in siloes, as we are all part of multiple networks and partnerships, ever more so as digital drives connectivity globally. Eco system thinking drives different leadership behaviours which centre on being adaptive, on listening to learn and working collaboratively by default.  Eco systems are networks of connections operating in symbiosis; where hierarchies are replaced by collaboration and where influencing skills come to the fore for leaders creating partnerships and collaborative teams in this new space.  Put simply, organisations cannot function in the digital environment (or indeed the post Covid environment) without collaboration, networks and partnerships and digital transformation has created a new organisational model heavily reliant on networks of connections.

Leaders who demonstrate eco system thinking are able to operate effectively across organisation and cultural boundaries. Digital demands that leaders constantly ask themselves ‘Under what circumstances can we make this possible?’  without the reassurance of established ways of doing things. Covid-19 has brought that kind of question and decision making to the fore for millions globally. Digital leadership is also often about removing the legacy barriers in organisations that get in the way of cooperation, again, Covid-19 has forced many organisations to remove these barriers in their crisis responses.

On-going, leading in the new digital context means balancing competing priorities, more autonomy for flatter teams and a higher tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.  Perfection is no longer the enemy of the good.

Falling in love with the problem

An important part of digital leadership is the ability to fall in love with the problem and not to rush headlong for the first ‘right’ solution. I saw a great example of this recently; I was running an innovation program for a group of industry leaders and we took them for a reverse mentoring session with some start-up founders. We mixed the groups up and they set to work on some of the industrial company’s most pressing digital challenges.

One of the start-up founders gave his pitch and outlined the way he and his team work together. He described their process simply and brilliantly - “We just ask; What is it we need to learn next? And we iterate as we go”. This could have come straight from the pages of Eric Reis’ excellent book The Lean Start Up. The idea of approaching their digital challenges as an iterative learning journey like the start-up was news to the leaders of the established business in the room.

Tech Ethics

The rapid pace of technological change has had a huge impact on our personal and working lives and leaders need to be aware of the wider implications of the human relationship with technology. Just because something is technically feasible doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Understanding the place for technology in the human, social and organisational environment at this macro, ethical level is a question increasingly straying out of the corridors of academia and rightly into board rooms and team meetings. 

Get smart
Practically leaders need to gen up on key digital methodologies and tools; you don’t need to be a scrum master but you do need to know that agile doesn’t mean doing the same stuff just faster! Covid-19 has seen the forced closure of millions of workplaces and a rapid digital upskilling in some economies of people working remotely. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what the virtual space has to offer organisations wanting to generate opportunities for collaborative virtual working across teams, geographies and functions in times of opportunity as well as times of crisis.

Whether it was your CEO, your CTO or Covid-19, the digital agenda has been accelerated across every sector so in some respects even talking about ‘digital’ leadership feels anachronistic. Digital is here to stay and for some right now it is the only means of working. Having moved so rapidly centre stage, thinking about your own digital leadership mindset should be at the top of your leadership agenda.