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The next generation are ready to embrace robots into their lives. The future is now. Are you ready to lead a robotised workforce? Strengthening your leadership skills can help you navigate the new digital landscape.

The digital revolution will not be televised

Whether you are digitising post-sales customer support, introducing robotic process automation (RPA) into your back-office, or enabling customers to self-serve through online portals or apps on their phones, it is likely you are feeling some anxiety and stress from the ever-increasing exposure to digital technology on your business.

Today’s leaders are expected to empower their teams and deliver digital transformation at the same time. The digital revolution will not be televised to be re-run later, so you can pick over it and learn the lessons in hindsight. The digital revolution will be live.

What is the need for human leaders?

Commentators suggest we are drowning in new ‘always on’ technology that pervades modern life. At work, this is not simply a technology matter, but rather an issue that goes to the core of what it means to be a leader.

In his most recent book, Conquering Digital Overload, Wisework’s Peter Thomson examines the effects on core activities that were once the preserve of human leaders: providing support, focusing on results, seeking different perspectives and solving problems.

Thomson and his co-authors explain how the digital revolution is stripping away the need for expert human leadership. When the internet can provide knowledge and empower groups of people to find their voice, they ask, what is the need for human leaders?

Could a robot become a leader?

The leaders who survive and thrive the digital revolution will work across organisational boundaries by putting their customers at the heart of their business processes. This means that businesses can best embrace digital transformation by using technology and artificial Intelligence to help prioritise customers’ needs and directing them towards appropriate services 24/7. Research by Oxford University suggests 47% of UK jobs will be lost to digitisation by 2050. Thankfully, you’ll still need ‘the human touch’ to coordinate – or ‘lead’ – the delivery of those services.

This means we need more and better-quality collaboration, and the ability to lead the whole system. Robots cannot do that, not yet anyway.

Whole system leadership

Whole system leadership tams collectively attend to strategy, operations and relationships. To do this effectively you need to develop a collaborative mindset and skillset in your leadership team.

I’ve helped several leadership teams in different sectors strengthen these skills through coaching and set-piece development. Agile leaders are already deploying live strategy frameworks and investing in efficient shared services and digitisation to ensure their strategy remains flexible and responsive to emerging customer needs.

The most effective leaders I speak to are also explicitly working on their relationships. This investment includes developing value-adding relationships with key customers, suppliers and other partners by becoming truly collaborative . It also includes engaging colleagues in a vision of how digital technology can improve their working lives and the quality of the services they provide and investing in skills to deliver those services excellently in a digitised world.

Now is the time to develop your leadership skills

To be ready to lead the digital transformation of your business, it is more important than ever to develop a collaborative mindset and keep your leadership skills current and relevant.

We can’t afford to wait for others to show us the way. And so – if not you, then who will navigate the complexity of leading a digitally augmented workforce?

Jeremy Lewis, March 2018

Jeremy is a Wisework Partner http://www.wisework.co.uk/partners

This post was first published on Wisework’s blog http://www.wisework.co.uk/content/robots-versus-humans-battle-leading-future-work .

We are told that past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance, especially when making personal financial investments. That’s why, in organisations, we write business cases to prove to ourselves we will get a return on investment. How does this apply to transformational change, when it’s not just finances, but relationships between people that need to change? We are told that past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance… but it is a good place to start.

Past – Present – Future … where do you tend to start?

“I want to change the culture,” is something I hear a lot from potential clients. They have an idea of what is NOT working and a vague notion that “empowerment”, more accountability” or “better collaboration” are the ways to change things. They then immediately set about defining what the future will look like and writing their business case. If this sounds familiar, chances are you are already on the path to failure. That is because you have over-rationalised it and are trying to make a purely financial case for investment.

The Future is unwritten

I’m not going to bore you with facts and figures about the failure of change programmes. You’ll know yourself that organisations often choose to invest in tangible things that can be measured in financial terms. Thing like restructuring, new systems and business processes. They tend to spend less effort investing in building truly collaborative way of working, innovating and problem-solving. Because these are hard to do. Also, writing business cases forces you down that path. It is often a logical place to start, but it is not the whole story.

Let the Future remain unwritten for a little longer

In my experience, organisations that over rely on these rational aspects of change tend to achieve limited success, smaller business benefits and alienate their people. Those organisations that consider the softer, relationship-orientated, people aspects of change achieve better results. Sometimes. A major issue, even when culture is properly considered, is that those seeking the change only look forwards to envision a brighter future.

Opportunities lie in the Past as well as the Future

This is, I fear, only half the story. By looking at how your organisation got to where it is today, you will understand what aspects of your current culture are already working well and need preserving. Reflect on the journey taken to get to where you are today, the successes, the failures, what has been learned (and what has not). This will give you a better understanding of what makes your organisation tick, and what might be holding it back.

Now is all there is

By achieving a deeper understanding of the Past, you allow yourself, collectively with your people, to let it go. You will become more intently focused on the Present. I believe the Present is really all that truly exists. Looking to the Past helps us understand the Present. Looking to the future tries to hi-Jack the Present and force it into something it is not ready to be.

Be right here, right now with your people and allow your Future Intention to emerge collectively from collaborative sense-making and reflecting on learnings from the Past. Pay attention to the Present to make your Future Intention a reality. There are a few simple, practical techniques and ways of working that can be applied every day to do this. The result is transformational. The result is the culture change you are seeking.

Jeremy J Lewis, committed to making a difference in embedding sustainable change

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Are you ready to lead a robotised workforce?