Business in Australia is moving swiftly, technology even quicker, and the potential for disruption is enormous. Executives can’t simply ‘keep up’ – rather they must steer their businesses and teams into the unknown.
In today’s Australian business environment of swift technology, constant disruption, globalisation and connectivity, businesses are altering dramatically, new companies are emerging, and success relies on being able to adapt speedily. This places new demands on leaders across all industry sectors.
The way leaders operate has to adjust to this Australian context.
Leading businesses the way we used to when environments and organisations were more stable, where we could easily distinguish between change and ‘business as usual’, simply does not work anymore.
Technology has played a big part in creating the ambiguity Executives must deal with. New technologies create an environment where new ways to conduct business are emerging much faster; where our business models are changing, this feeds into the expectations of consumers, and in the case of government organisations, citizens.
Executives are relentlessly facing instability and uncertainty. As they continually adapt strategies, pivot their product or service offerings, grow or shrink their employees, or swiftly react to shifts in consumer demands – Leaders would need to adjust the way that they lead.
Executives need to think about their role as one of creating businesses that are adaptive and can deal with emergent issues and change in every nature.
Paradigm Shift of leadership
In Australia’s multidimensional environment, where new challenges, technologies and risks arise each day, one person cannot be expected to have all the answers. Businesses need to shift from a hierarchical style of leadership to a more collaborative and network style.
Positional power does not rule anymore. That is not to say that there are not times when responsibilities need to be completed, where an employee with the right expertise knows what to do, and employees just need to get on with it.
Business outcomes are increasingly achieved through teamwork across divisions of a business, or with contractors external to a business. Morshona looks to the leadership ‘ecosystem’ engaged by many technology organisation as an example of this shift.
High affluent digital Companies function as ‘networked companies’, with more organic systems, rather than with an organisational chart with boxes laid out on a page. This environment also reflects how changing employee expectations are impacting Executives.
The requirement for success in these models is more about facilitation of work and networks and leading from anywhere. It is not about appointing the primogenital, the most experienced, or the person in the highest level job. It’s about anticipating and responding to what the Australian context demands.
Changing leadership methodology
Strategy and solutions were once commonly executed by a subject matter expert, but are now more likely to come from gathering insights from employees and stakeholders that are close to a problem.
It is moving Executives from a strong ‘task-orientation’, where leadership skill-sets are about planning and delivering, to more of a ‘facilitator orientation’, which is about designing processes to engage employees, facilitating dialogue, guiding and equipping employees to work together.
This requires Leader’s self-awareness, strong people skills and the ability to analyse context and make choices about the right approach. “Cognizant leadership”.
Cognizant leadership is asking unfathomable questions about what leadership means and what is required in a given situation. Executives need to be aware of when they are exercising positional power vs. leadership. Or when they need to be the expert vs. facilitating the input of others.
Having an open view to new ways of leading is important, as well as being comfortable that complexity is now a constant level playing field.
The complexity requires employees to look at problems from multiple perspectives to come to an answer. Trusting on hierarchy or believing achieving outcomes within organisational ‘as Iceland’ no longer serves well.
Listening, engaging others, and helping employees to see meaning in their work helps achieve good outcomes. There are some extremely positive examples of Executives who have shifted from the old leadership approach. It is inspiring to see people who are actively reflecting and experimenting; the power of small changes has massive ‘ripple effects’ throughout their organisations.
Support for a new approach
Individual leadership change is an important part of how businesses will be capable of not only surviving, but thriving, in today’s environment. Nevertheless, it is also important to look at the system in which employees lead. Cultivating a new leadership style takes courage and cognizant effort on the part of the organisation as a whole, the leaders, and the employees they are leading.
Leaders need a lot of support to not regress, because the systems are bigger than they are, and the business’ culture will require focused leadership attention.
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