At one point, this was understandable. Today, it is becoming dangerous.

We often talk about legacy systems as organisational debt. However, increasingly, I believe many organisations are carrying something far riskier:

Legacy leadership models in a technological world.

Yet, many leadership structures still operate as though technology is simply an operational service rather than a strategic force reshaping the entire ecosystem around them.

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Technology is no longer a support function

For decades, many organisations treated technology as a support service. Something that is sitting quietly beneath the business.

It maintained infrastructure. Managed devices. Supported payroll systems. Kept emails flowing. Fixed issues when things broke.

Technology was important, but it was rarely viewed as central to leadership thinking. As a result, many organisational structures evolved in a way that positioned technology beneath operations, finance or administrative functions rather than alongside strategic decision-making.

At the time, this made sense. But the world changed. Today, technology no longer simply supports the business. It shapes the business entirely.

It shapes:

• customer experience
• workforce capability
• operational agility
• communication
• decision-making
• adaptability
• culture
• trust
• speed of innovation

Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift exponentially.

We are now entering an era where technology influences not only how organisations operate, but how we work, think, collaborate and make decisions inside them.

Yet, many leadership models still operate from an outdated paradigm, where technology is viewed primarily as an operational function rather than a strategic ecosystem, influencing every layer of the organisation.

This outdated thinking creates a dangerous disconnect. Because while organisations are investing millions into:

• AI
• automation
• enterprise systems
• digital transformation
• data platforms

The people making strategic decisions are not always technologically fluent enough to fully understand the long-term implications of the systems reshaping their businesses.

The result is often:

• overcomplicated ecosystems
• disconnected platforms
• poor adoption
• transformation fatigue
• workflow friction
• tool overload
• growing dependency on external consultants to hold systems together

Not because leaders are incapable. Because many leadership capability models were built for a different era. An era where technology changed slowly.

That era no longer exists.

The shift no one saw coming

For years, executives could succeed without deeply understanding technology, because technology itself was not driving organisational evolution at the speed it is today.

Today, that gap is becoming increasingly visible. Especially as artificial intelligence accelerates decision-making, automation, workforce redesign and operational complexity faster than many organisations can adapt.

This is not simply creating a technology challenge. It is creating an executive capability challenge.

Because the organisations struggling most are often not lacking intelligence, investment or ambition. They are struggling to adapt leadership thinking fast enough to match the speed of systemic change unfolding around them.

Many are still attempting to solve emerging complexity using leadership models designed for a far more predictable world. Yet, artificial intelligence, automation and exponential technological growth are no longer creating gradual change.

They are reshaping how organisations operate, communicate, make decisions and evolve in real time. This is why I believe we are now standing at a significant threshold moment in leadership. Not simply because technology is advancing, but because the future is no longer waiting for leadership to catch up.

The Threshold we now face

I don’t know about you, but lately I have found myself feeling that the world is moving differently now. Faster. More interconnected. More unpredictable. As though the future is arriving before many of us have fully processed the last wave of change.

As leaders, we need to move, and move quickly, to prepare for the next wave of technological acceleration already unfolding around us.

In the immediate term, one of the most powerful shifts organisations can make is to bring technology leadership into the executive decision-making fold rather than leaving it buried beneath operational or financial structures.

Not simply to modernise systems, but to build leadership teams capable of navigating complexity, uncertainty and rapid technological evolution with greater confidence, clarity and conviction.

Because the next wave of technological evolution will not be navigated successfully through control alone, but through leadership teams adaptive enough to move with it consciously.

In the process, leaders need to become technology savvy. It’s no longer an excuse to say ‘I’m not really a tech person”.

The future Leader is Different

The future leader will not succeed because they know everything. No one can.

The pace of technological acceleration is now moving too quickly for any single individual to hold complete expertise across every emerging system, platform or capability.

But the leaders who thrive in the next era will be different in another way.

They will be curious enough to keep learning. Adaptive enough to evolve. Self-aware enough to recognise where their knowledge gaps exist. And wise enough to bring the right voices into the room before decisions are made.

The future leader understands that technology is no longer separate from:

• culture
• workforce capability
• communication
• operational design
• customer trust
• human behaviour
• organisational adaptability

It is intertwined with all of it.

This means leadership itself must become more interconnected. Less siloed. Less driven by rigid hierarchy and control.

And more capable of integrating:

• technological insight
• systems thinking
• emotional intelligence
• strategic foresight
• human-centred decision-making

The strongest leaders of the future may not be those who resist change the longest. They may be the ones most willing to evolve alongside it. Not from fear. But from awareness.

Because conscious leadership in an age of exponential technology requires something many organisations have not historically prioritised:

The ability to adapt before disruption forces it upon us.

Leadership Wisdom in an Age of Exponential Technology

If this article felt like it had a sting, welcome to the new world of visionary leadership. Because the uncomfortable truth is that the future will increasingly demand more from all of us. More awareness. More adaptability. More courage to evolve beyond the identities, systems and leadership models that once made us successful.

Artificial intelligence and exponential technological growth are not simply changing business. They are changing the conditions under which humanity itself operates. And while many fear that technology will diminish the importance of being human, I believe the opposite may also be true.

As automation accelerates, deeply human capabilities may become even more valuable:

• wisdom
• discernment
• emotional intelligence
• ethical leadership
• intuition
• creativity
• systems awareness
• conscious decision-making

Because technology may increase speed. Yet human wisdom still determines direction.

The organisations that thrive in the next decade may not be the ones with the most technology. They may be the ones whose leaders are willing to evolve alongside it.

Not through fear. Not through control.

But through the courage to remain conscious, curious and deeply human while navigating a future arriving faster than many ever expected.

The threshold is already here. The question is no longer whether the future will change leadership. The real question is whether leadership is willing to change with it.

For years, I have listened to executives confidently approve technology decisions while… was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you ever felt like your organisation is being forced into a box that doesn’t truly solve your problems — a so-called “one size fits all” solution that, in reality, doesn’t really fit anyone properly?

The right system feels supportive.

The wrong system feels like control.

Control creates complexity. It forces organisations to rework how they operate just to fit the system.

Support creates simplicity, whilst allowing the system to fit your needs, not the other way around.

The “One Solution Fits All” Approach

There’s a reason this approach is so commonly pushed, even though it so often fails organisations.

From a vendor perspective, it:

• Requires far less effort from the vendor

• Requires vastly more effort from the organisation

It creates a narrative of “this is how the system works — your organisation needs to change to fit it.”

This is often dressed up as industry best practice.

In truth, this approach is lazy.

It ensures less input from the vendor, higher profit margins, and minimal need to deeply understand your real business problems. At the same time, it shifts the burden — and the pain — onto your people.

Pretending all organisations have the same problems only benefits one group: the vendor.

This forced approach creates friction everywhere. Vendors often label this a change management problem, which is conveniently something they rarely meaningfully participate in.

Those working inside organisations quickly discover the truth:

• The resistance is not a lack of desire to change.
• It’s frustration from being misunderstood and forced into ill-fitting solutions.

The Tailored, Supportive Approach

True transformation starts with understanding — people, processes, pain points, and where the organisation genuinely wants to go before a solution is selected.

Many vendors and top-tier consulting firms position this as too hard, too slow, or too expensive.

What they often mean is:

• It’s expensive for them in time, people, and profit margins.
• It requires deeper problem-solving capability than a predominantly graduate workforce may possess. It also requires genuine curiosity, something that can’t be templated.

Here’s the irony:

Most organisations already have the expertise they need inside their own walls. Your people know the friction points. They often know what’s broken and sometimes even how to fix it. All that’s required is to engage them. And listen.

When organisations select solutions from this position of clarity, they are far more powerful. They ask better questions. They make better decisions. They are far harder to sell the wrong solution to.

Vendors may not like well-informed clients. Or they may simply not be used to them. It depends on who is telling the story

The Real Outcome: Ownership vs Outsourcing Responsibility

When organisations take ownership of solving their own problems, outcomes improve.

You can outsource processes. However, you cannot outsource your organisational risk.

When you allow a vendor to take control of defining and solving your problems, they will force those problems into their solution — because they do not carry your long-term risk. You do.

True transformation means advising vendors what you need, not allowing them to tell you what you want.

If a vendor’s offering doesn’t fit your needs, you move on.

That is ownership. That is power. That is responsible leadership.

When organisations avoid this, transformation budgets blow out, staff burn out, and initiatives intended to improve things often create more problems than they solve.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

When We Take Back Control

When was the last time you asked yourself whether your organisation is in control of its transformation — or whether someone else is controlling it for you?

When leaders reclaim ownership, transformation stops being a burden and becomes an opportunity. Teams feel seen and engaged, solutions fit the real problems, and budgets and energy are respected. Innovation flows, friction fades, and the organisation emerges stronger, smarter, and more connected than ever — a space where both people and systems thrive.

The Hidden Cost of Surrendering Control in Transformation — And How Leaders Can Reclaim It was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Something curious is happening in our conversations about artificial intelligence. As AI systems begin to exhibit emergent behaviours — patterns forming without being explicitly programmed — fear has rushed in to fill the space where curiosity once lived. Headlines warn us that AI is “learning human skills,” collaborating, adapting, even surprising its creators.

Yet beneath the alarmist framing lies a quieter, more confronting truth: AI is not becoming more human, it is mirroring us, flaws and all.

The Repetition Effect

Our reliance on repetition, our tendency to accept what is most familiar as truth, and our growing discomfort with pausing to question what we are being shown are all on display.

Repetition has a powerful psychological effect. When an idea is repeated often enough, by enough voices, across enough platforms, it begins to feel true, regardless of its accuracy. Familiarity masquerades as certainty.

This is not a flaw unique to artificial intelligence; it is a deeply human cognitive shortcut. AI systems simply formalise this process mathematically, amplifying what appears most frequently in the data they are trained on. When fear dominates public discourse, the loudest patterns are rarely the most considered, yet they become the ones most readily accepted.

How these Patterns become Problematic

A clear example of this pattern can be seen in how organisations are rushing to integrate AI into their operations. Driven by fear of being left behind, many businesses are embedding AI into existing processes without first questioning whether those processes are still fit for purpose.

Automation is then layered onto habits rather than with intention. The result is not innovation, but amplification of inefficiency. In many cases, AI is being asked to optimise workflows that were never designed with clarity, coherence, or human need in mind, leading to widespread implementation failures and significant financial losses.

This is repetition mistaken for progress.

Instead of pausing to ask “What problem are we truly trying to solve”.

Organisations replicate what has always been done, faster, louder, and at greater scale. AI then becomes the scapegoat for failure, when the real issue lies upstream: unexamined assumptions, inherited processes, and a reluctance to disrupt familiar ways of working.

The need to Re-build Curiosity instead of Fear

When curiosity is absent, technology does not transform, it merely accelerates the past.

Curiosity is not a luxury in times of change, it is a leadership responsibility.

We do not have a technology problem; we have a people problem. We cannot create systems we are not capable of thinking into existence.

When leaders outsource discernment to tools without first examining their own assumptions, fears, and inherited beliefs, they do not gain intelligence, they lose agency.

AI does not absolve us of responsibility; it magnifies the quality of the thinking we bring to it. If that sentence feels hard to swallow, it is because it’s true.

As they say “Give a woman a house, and she makes it a home”. Yet “Give AI old processes, expecting miracles, and you will re-create the past.”

The erosion of curiosity is not accidental. Fear rewards certainty, speed, and compliance, while curiosity requires pause, humility, and the willingness to not know.

We have a People Problem

In many organisational cultures, questioning is quietly discouraged, seen as resistance rather than intelligence. Over time, this conditions people to accept what is repeated instead of exploring what is possible. AI, trained on these same environments, faithfully reproduces the patterns it is given, including the absence of inquiry.

AI is not introducing a new problem into our systems; it is revealing an old one. We cannot create anything we are not capable of thinking. If our thinking is narrow, reactive, or fear-driven, our technologies will reflect that limitation.

If our thinking is curious, courageous, and conscious, our technologies become instruments of insight rather than acceleration.

The Mirror Effect

The mirror is neutral. What matters is who is willing to look.

Before we look to technology for answers, we must first be willing to look in the mirror. Not to assign blame, but to accept responsibility.

The patterns emerging in AI are not warnings of an external threat; they are reflections of our internal state, how we think, how we decide, and how often we trade curiosity for certainty. Until we are willing to see ourselves clearly, no amount of technological advancement will produce wiser outcomes.

Only from this place of honest self-recognition can curiosity be reclaimed. Curiosity is not something to be added later, once systems are built and strategies deployed. It is the foundation from which meaningful innovation emerges.

When we reconnect with our own capacity to question, imagine, and think beyond inherited assumptions, the relationship with AI shifts. Technology becomes a collaborator in exploration rather than a substitute for thinking.

What the Future Holds

The potential of what becomes possible with AI is not limited by the tools themselves, but by the consciousness that creates and directs them.

We must first remember our own limitless capacity to think, discern, and imagine, because we can only ever create technologies that reflect who we are willing to become.

Are you cultivating curiosity or rushing to hit the fear button?

Reclaiming Curiosity — The lessons AI Holds for Human Leadership was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I regularly see executive recruitment agencies actively trying to introduce the following 8 essential skill sets to foster recruitment of candidates to support the building of more diverse, innovative and successful organisations.

I congratulate recruiters who are vigilant in their constant pursuit of greatness in the world. However, what I have noticed is that a diligent recruiter’s advice far too often falls completely on deaf ears. This must be incredibly frustrating for recruitment agencies, particularly in executive recruitment.

These are the 8 skills I see repetitively bandied around as the key skills of great leaders:-

1. Visionary Leadership
2. Effective communication
3. Strategic thinking
4. Collaborative Spirit
5. Resilience in adversity
6. Fiscal Responsibility
7. Commitment to Equity and Inclusion
8. Ethical Integrity

I agree, as I imagine most others would believe that these skills are undoubtedly essential in the pursuit of great leadership. The problem is that knowing them is not the same as doing them at all. In the same way, the acquisition of knowledge is not experience. A concept that will become clearer as you read on.

When boards are looking to recruit CEOs, instead of looking for these valuable skills that are developed through experience, they are frequently overshadowed with a focus on a tick-the-box traditional higher education that aspires that the more letters you have after your name the better your skills, when in reality this could not be any further from the truth. The same boards are also looking specifically for extensive industry experience.

I know this because I have worked alongside many executives who match the education is everything criteria, yet they don’t have diversity in experience, which regularly impacts the success and culture of the organisations they lead. This occurs when people rise through a single industry, eventually becoming a CEO after 10 to 20 years, in either the same employer and/or staying within the same industry. In industry, we like to term this specialisation. This may have been relevant and even sought after 20 years ago, but today it is producing stagnation on a mass scale.

Those who decided to generalise, rather than specialise 20 years ago are now in a much stronger position to stay relevant in fast-changing marketplaces, most of which are being impacted greatly by technology. I am one of those people who was looked at sideways for changing jobs and fields regularly to build my diversity of skills. I knew to do this because I am a visionary. I could see the writing on the wall so to speak, that others could not.

I digress though. Let’s return back to understanding the difference between traditional education and experience speckled with modern styles of knowledge gathering.

The easiest way to explain the false attachment to traditional education credentials is by using a simple analogy.

First, let’s look at the difference between education and skills. It is important to be clear. Your education qualifications are not skills, no more than reading a book makes you able to put what is in the book into action in real-world situations. Education is where you acquire knowledge, that is yet to be put into action. Knowledge can be acquired through many avenues, whilst a traditional university degree is merely one of them.

However, in stark contrast, your experience is where you develop this knowledge into real-life applied skills. This happens in a variety of ways that become re-appliable across an organisation and upwards through promotional opportunities. Yet for some reason, the majority of the time we either don’t see the correlation in skills development or completely ignore it. Thus prioritising traditional education qualifications over skills development, time and time again. This often even occurs when the qualification could have been attained more than 10 years ago, and in some instances more than 20 years ago.

In contrast, more innovative forms of knowledge attainment are gained as the knowledge is needed, allowing for knowledge to become skills in quick succession. This fast pace of knowledge to skill in practice means that the learning is applied almost immediately when it is needed, in stark contrast to a 20-year-old traditional form of education like a degree. Just try to remember what you learned at uni 20 years ago and then see if it is even relevant today, or even 5 years ago for that matter. Knowledge sticks faster, better and more often when it is relevant to your current circumstances.

Whilst focusing on outdated models of knowledge building in this way, we are overlooking exceptional talent held within our organisations and thus not giving rise to opportunities for shining stars to rise into executive roles, including as CEOs.

When you get down to the basic nuts and bolts of it, every single CEO, General Manager or Executive was once a first-timer. This means that at some point someone took a chance on them and gave them the opportunity to become a new CEO or Executive for the very first time.

So in today’s world, why are we overlooking exceptional leadership talent and only recruiting CEOs who have already been CEOs elsewhere and Executives who have already been Executives elsewhere? All from within our industry sector.

The world has evolved, did we forget to evolve with it?

I have considered these questions many times in my career. Through recognising repeating patterns, I have come to the ultimate realisation that we might have lost our ability to innovate and take calculated risks. We choose to play it safe not only by recruiting someone who has already done the job, but we want someone who has already done it in the same industry.

In playing safe and recruiting only within our industry we are not only undervaluing up-and-coming leaders, we are also undervaluing the different experiences and perspectives that newness brings to organisations. Along with this, we are also underestimating people’s ability to gain industry knowledge on the go to fulfil a role.

This is occurring to some extent to the detriment of almost every organisation I have engaged within the last 30 years.

I have personally made a living moving from industry to industry and job role to job role many times over. By doing this I have gained invaluable insights spanning a diversity of job roles and industries. All of these insights have been extremely valuable in every organisation I have engaged with.

There is a saying;

‘When you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you’ve always had’

Industries are now rarely inviting so-called outsiders into their industry talent pool unless it is an entry-level job. Particularly in government where many senior Managers have worked in their organisation or industry for more than 10 years. I have been watching the job market for more than 20 years, with job advertisements repeatedly often seeking 7- 10 years of experience, when we know that employment agencies identify currency as only the last 5 years.

So the question I feel compelled to ask is; If currency is considered 5 years, and it’s commonplace for CEO’s to move on within 5 years, why then are we rewarding stagnation within so many organisations and constantly recruiting more of the same?

The world is changing fast, particularly in technology. Vision, Innovation & strategic prowess come from new ways of seeing old problems, which only come with new visionaries and innovators joining your organisation.

An old saying that has resurfaced a lot recently that I love, says it all;

‘A fish rots at the head’

So organisations need to consider how innovative they are being when always recruiting existing CEOs and Executives from within their industry sector time and time again.

We need to break this cycle of playing safe if we want organisations to innovate and progress through the evolution of technology that is upon us.

We need to welcome new talent with open arms of people who have never been CEOs or Executives before and support them to step into these roles enthusiastically.

These new people will bring a freshness in perspective that could potentially catapult your organisation to new heights of innovation, strategic thinking and collaboration.

Instead of choosing to keep recruiting people from within the same industry. Choosing to give outsiders an opportunity to shine a light on problems with a completely new focus, allows the introduction of skills from other industries that your organisation may be in dire need of right now.

How do I know this you might be thinking?

I have spent the last 30 years being an outsider. Remember, I have made a living changing careers and industries intentionally to consistently bring new and innovative ideas to environments that were unintentionally stagnating.

Once you get on the stagnation highway, your organisation can unknowingly enter dire straights and a downhill run to failure, creating toxic cultures along the way. The longer you stay on the stagnation highway, the more you take the safe route and the less obvious it is to see the downward spiral.

An outsider looking through a different lens can help you to spot this quickly. Enabling you to pivot quickly to avoid crippling situations that are costly to recover from.

Just ask an average CEO how much they are spending to rectify technology stagnation and culture programs in an attempt to fix culture problems. The numbers will make your eyes pop.

We need to get fresh eyes in our organisations regularly to keep us on our toes. When I say in, I mean new internal staff with long-term buy-in and accountability for success. Not consulting firms that have no accountability or long-term desire to help change stick beyond their road map delivery. Lasting change takes 6 to 10 years. Consulting firms are long gone by then because there is no way you can afford their exorbitant fees that long.

Ask yourself, is your organisation playing it safe on the stagnation highway?

You might need a second opinion if you have also been there too long.

Young people understand this far better than most. Younger generations are moving in and out of job roles, and organisations, completely changing careers with absolute ease. They are showing the rest of the world how important it is to keep a fresh perspective.

This fresh perspective is a beautiful way to help us to stay curious, not just for those who bring the fresh perspective, but also for those who need the fresh perspective in the organisations they are working within.

Curiosity is an incredibly important skill to foster enabling the development and enhancement of visionary leadership. Curiosity allows you to lean in, and to have the foresight to anticipate challenges and identify opportunities at the same time.

Let’s look at these skills individually one by one to understand their true value in application.

Visionary Leadership

Having a clear vision fostering a culture of innovation and progress with the ability to navigate complexity is essential in the fast-changing technology world we are working and living in.

Visionary leaders develop their skills over time, not in a classroom but on the floor of businesses, observing, listening and keeping abreast of technology advancements.

Visionary leaders see the way forward when others cannot, through an intertwined web of connections between function, tensions and future needs. They see the big picture and can take your organisation on the journey you need to go on, in a way that can often seem effortless.

Visionary leaders find ways to see patterns and problems clearly, with their well-developed skills in self and spatial awareness. They do not profess to have all the answers, rather they know how to reach into organisations to find the hidden talent within, to get the job done.

Effective communication

The ability to convey complex ideas to diverse stakeholders, whilst building trust and consensus across diverse stakeholder groups are essential skills that are all part of the communication skill set of a great leader.

In a world where complexity seems everywhere, the ability to be able to simplify anything is a rare skill in today’s leaders.

You know someone knows what they are talking about well when they can explain something that appears complex, in a simple way. This skill also is developed through hands-on experience, not through traditional educational knowledge or outdated complex frameworks and theories.

When you learn to develop this skill as a leader, you almost seem to magnetically attract trust at the same time, which we know is fundamentally important for successful leadership. Complexity creates frustrations leading to a lack of trust. On the other hand, simplicity creates understanding that leads to trust.

Stakeholder engagement skills are gained through the experience of engaging with stakeholders, failing and pivoting repeatedly. This coupled with a healthy developed intuition is quite the powerhouse of communication skills in a great leader.

We vastly underestimate and undervalue intuition in business. We regularly second-guess ourselves and our intuition which naturally guides us in the right direction.

Great Leaders have highly developed and trusted intuitive muscles that they have worked on personally to elevate from within themselves.

Strategic thinking

The ability to navigate with strategic prowess by having the foresight to anticipate challenges, identify opportunities and formulate comprehensive strategies for sustainable development often seems to be as rare as hen’s teeth. As is the ability to let go, and trust your people to decide the how for themselves, once you’ve sorted the what in the strategy.

Strategic thinking couples closely with vision in great leaders. Anticipating challenges as a visionary puts you and your organisation ahead of the game. It gives your people something to connect to so that you can collaborate to form the way forward together.

Strategic thinking of great leaders helps to draw out the best ideas in your people who are closer to the problems your organisation is trying to solve.

Strategic thinking requires a willingness to take risks. When you show up as a leader who sees risk-taking and innovation as good practices, you foster these skills in your people.

Risk-taking and innovative collaboration are essential components to progress organisations, particularly through technology and fast-moving market changes. When great leaders foster these skills in their people you can gain the advantage in your sector and develop your future leaders at the same time.

Collaborative Spirit

The ability to prioritise collaboration, and forging partnerships with other agencies, community groups and businesses to achieve collective success, is essential to the success of great leadership.

No one person has or even should have, all the answers. Diversity in perspective is essential to uncover all the possibilities for success or failure. It’s the problem shared is a problem-halved scenario, and great leaders know how important collaboration is for both the bottom line and the ongoing culture of your organisation.

Resilience in adversity

The ability to be resilient in the face of crises or setbacks, to stay steadfast, to remain composed under pressure and to adapt swiftly to changing circumstances to lead through turbulent times is a critical success factor for a great leader.

Resilience under pressure, is equally not a skill gained through traditional educational knowledge. Resilience takes effort and time to develop. This skill is frequently developed very successfully before entering an executive role. Great leaders have taken the time to hone their skills in resilience, through mistakes and setbacks, learning and moving forward in a continued pursuit of personal development.

A Resilient leader gains respect from their people by charting the way forward, creating stability even when it feels unstable to those around them.

Fiscal Responsibility

Sound financial management and governance ability to prudently ensure dollars are allocated wisely and transparently for the benefit of all stakeholders is important.

However, it is important to note that fiscal responsibility alone will never get the job done. I have seen more times than I’d like to count, where this skill has been considered more important than the other 7 to the detriment of business outcomes.

A great leader must be proficient in all 8 skills. Achieving the bottom line, focused only on fiscal responsibility, is like detonating a bomb in your organisation’s culture, only providing short-term financial gains.

Great leaders know this well. It is critically important to not let money completely taint your views when looking for someone to fill an executive role in your organisation.

A balanced skill set in a leader is the only way to deliver balanced and sustainable success in your organisation long term.

I see far too often accountants as CEOs who have underdeveloped skills in many of the 7 other skills of great leaders.

That is not to say that all accountants don’t have all 8 skills of a great leader. On the contrary, I have seen some exceptional leaders who started their careers in accounting. However, these were always people who made great efforts to diversify their skills through changing roles and intentional self-development.

Commitment to Equity and Inclusion

The ability to champion diversity, equity and inclusion is a non-negotiable skill for a great leader. Working tirelessly to dismantle barriers, foster inclusivity and ensure all voices are considered equal and heard in decision-making processes must be non-negotiable within your organisation.

Diversity, equity and inclusion to ensure adequate representation throughout every level of your organisation is essential to get the best results. Diversity of people brings diversity of the 8 skills of great leadership.

When diversity does not flow all the way to the top of your organisation, you create disconnection which is a killer on all fronts. This is a simple problem to solve. By replicating the diversity across each level of your organisation, all people at all levels feel represented.

A perfect example of how this goes wrong is when an organisation with 50% women has less than 10% female leaders.

The same applies to all other areas of diversity. When all people are fairly represented at all levels people feel heard. When people feel heard the overall organisation does better in every way.

Change becomes effortless when representation is balanced with strong collaboration skills of great leaders. In turn, balance brings diverse perspectives to the right tables when decisions are being made impacting everyone.

Ethical Integrity

Trust is the cornerstone of leadership, possessing the highest ethical standards, while demonstrating honesty, integrity and accountability are non-negotiable in the development of great leaders.

In a world where trust has been greatly eroded at every turn, we’ve become quite a sceptical bunch, to say the least.

Trust begins at home. Great leaders show great fortitude in the development of their ability to trust themselves. When you develop trust within, showing trust towards others becomes far easier.

We often say that trust is earned when we speak of trusting others. Yet without self-awareness and introspection, we frequently expect others to trust us implicitly.

Great Leaders have learned this lesson and build trusting relationships with their people, by actively demonstrating honesty, integrity and accountability themselves.

When ethical integrity is playing out successfully in a work environment, the ripple effect is felt far and wide, because the demonstration of ethical integrity by great leaders is adopted across stakeholders both within and externally, including customers, communities and suppliers.

Future leaders

So next time you are on a board or recruitment panel for the next executive in your organisation, consider looking closely at these 8 interrelated skills and where they are gained. You might just find yourself a great leader in a person or place you may have never expected.

Great leaders are overlooked every day. If you make it your business to find the hidden gems with these 8 skills balanced, by looking in the places you may have forgotten. You, like I was, will be pleasantly surprised where they could take your organisation.

The great leaders of tomorrow have already moved beyond traditional knowledge acquisition, purposefully developing their skills to genuinely engage their empathy and intuition, showing up in the vulnerability of their humanness.

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To your success! You’ve got this!

Much love to you all

The 8 essential skills of great leadership regularly overlooked in up-and-coming leaders was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the somewhat unpopular viewpoint of those happy to complain about what is going wrong. Yet, when it comes to participation they have all the excuses in the world not to participate.

In change management, we tend to like labelling these people as disrupters and blockers. Yet, in reality, the vast majority of people in organisations from senior leadership down are pointing towards other people, whilst taking little to no accountability for being one of these very same people themselves.

What you end up with is a mass deflection exercise, called the blame game and surprise surprise, nothing changes. On the contrary, often the organisation goes backward.

Ownership and accountability for change is the single largest problem that holds organisations back in business transformations. There is a whole lot of smoke and mirrors that goes on, giving lip service to change with big words. However, with insignificant real individual action.

I spent a significant part of my early career, sitting on the fringes of the change management space. During this time I observed the change management process, utilising a plethora of complicated frameworks and tools, only to see a repetition of limited success, whilst the vast majority of the time, there was absolute failure time and time again, to the frustration of every change manager.

There are some key repeating patterns that I became aware of. I then adopted strategies into my practice of change management to avoid some fundamental failures of transformation programs that might surprise you.

So here they are:-

Change Leadership is every Leader’s responsibility

For any workplace to change, the people leading the change, must be prepared to change personally and professionally as part of the change strategy.

Why? Because a fish rots at the head.

So, if as a leader, you are not prepared to change both personally and professionally, you are setting your entire organisation up to fail.

You might think this sounds harsh, yet the proof, so to speak, is in the pudding. Exceptional change leadership commitment, from the very top of the organisation must be a non-negotiable. Without it, any transformation program is doomed to fail.

Commitment is not lip service either. Whether as an executive, you want to admit it or not, lip service to change required through business transformation programs, is common practice at senior levels of organisations. Political game-playing and lack of leadership group cohesion must be obliterated at any cost.

The only successful way forward in business transformations is a fully aligned and committed leadership team.

This means you must remove all roadblocks to success in your organisational structure before you even consider a business transformation program. Avoiding this step has been proven time and time again to be disastrous.

Effective Stakeholder Engagement is a preparation exercise

To achieve success, before your organisation undertakes a transformation journey. You must engage with all staff to uncover the existing problems that need to be solved by the transformation, causing bottlenecks and friction in the organisation, instead of the leadership-perceived problems.

This is essentially due to the lack of proximity Senior Leaders have to the problems that exist across their organisations. Simply because without direct interaction where the friction occurs, the leadership team are unlikely to know what then needs to be changed to remove the friction.

Senior leaders tend to focus on strategic outcomes. Without understanding the problems deep in the organisation that impact strategic goals, it is like playing pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded.

The people deep in the organisation are at the cold face. By collaborating with them through effective stakeholder engagement, Senior leaders can connect desired strategic objectives to outcomes. This occurs as a result of a problem-solving approach that can support the removal of the bottlenecks and friction, currently hindering the achievement of strategic objectives. Good stakeholder analysis therefore becomes a win/win for all parties.

If you don’t commit to a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process, before the commencement of project delivery. You will likely completely lose the engagement of your people, who are in reality the ones who will be doing all the heavy lifting during project delivery.

When you don’t undertake comprehensive stakeholder analysis, before the commencement of project delivery, you then place an excessive workload on your people on the fly during project delivery. This can play a significant role in burnout when staff are already busy with business-as-usual activities. If high cadence delivery continues, burn-out becomes a real problem, potentially resulting in high dissatisfaction, and or high staff turnover.

As a result of the organisation’s lack of psychosocial responsibility, the organisation could quickly find itself in hot water fast, exacerbating the problem the further you go into the delivery program unabated.

There are legal requirements regarding managing psychosocial responsibility as an employer. Once you hit a roll of these unmanaged risks head-on, the slow, and seemingly unseen demise of the program, will fast turn into a high-speed rollercoaster downhill.

Current & Future State Analysis and Planning is non-negotiable

Before engaging with any external vendors or partners through a transformation program, your organisation must know your current state and the desired future state clearly, that you want to create through the transformation program.

Without knowing clearly where you are and where you want to go, your organisation is doomed to failure, which can cost you a lot of wasted time, resources and money.

Without being clear about where you are, and where you want to go collectively, you will burn out your best people. This will result in staff turnover of often the key supportive people, who you need to stay to ensure successful outcomes.

Poor analysis, alignment and planning create these unnecessary circumstances, potentially exacerbating the risk profile of your organisation and the program delivery, at the same time.

It is well known and understood in industry, that your best staff always leave first. This is usually because they know their value, even if the organisation doesn’t see it. These people are also constantly over-utilised and stretched, due to a lack of capability across the organisation in their area of expertise.

Why these 3 focuses are so important

By being aware of these three key focuses before a transformation program begins, you have the greatest chance of success.

Why? Good planning, analysis and stakeholder engagement are well-known factors in successfully achieving business transformation program outcomes.

Taking shortcuts or assuming as a leadership team what needs to change, is an absolute recipe for disaster that could cause significant impacts to your business, which will have both short and long-term detrimental implications.

Make these changes in your structure to set you up for success

Start today by focusing on these three things and you will see the immense difference they make.

If your leadership team is not prepared to change personally and professionally, it might be time to find new leaders.

If you are one of those leaders, it may be time to step aside so you don’t hold the organisation back.

Alternatively, if you work for an organisation where your leaders expect you to change, but are not prepared to change along with it, run for the hills before you get completely burned out.

I have seen burned-out good people in business, more times than I would like to count. This leaves people feeling completely depleted, undervalued, depressed, and stressed which can take a huge hit on their self-worth. No job or business transformation is worth that, no matter how much they pay you.

There is a better way

Believe it or not, business transformation programs can be enjoyable and beneficial to everyone who participates when you get the pace and focus right.

It takes everyone working together to move an organisation forward, from the top down, and that includes you too.

Want to connect with us? Click HERE to reach out for a chat.

Think about what role you are playing and consider if it is the right role to support change in your organisation.

Click HERE to find out more about what we do.

Click HERE to access free mindfulness resources from anywhere, any time.

You’ve got this!

Much love to you all

The 3 most common change pitfalls failing businesses everywhere was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Without the support of an unbiased second opinion in business transformations these days, things can get crazy fast, unless you have bottomless pockets.

With price tags for transformation programs now reaching the hundreds of millions, it wouldn't be remiss to think the world has gone completely mad.

So, what do I mean by an unbiased second opinion, you might be thinking?

It is kind of like getting a personal health diagnosis on a problem, where a specialist suggests you take drastic action, that might see you say, ‘Hang on a minute I might get a second opinion first before I make any decisions’.

Heading into what can be a very expensive business transformation program, without the right advice, can potentially pose the same risks to your business as the wrong medical advice can for your body.

Making the wrong move or not knowing the right questions to ask a vendor during a selection process can cost millions and valuable time that many organisations simply don’t have.

In these circumstances, organisations often rely on the vendor to guide them in the right direction. This can be problematic for both parties or beneficial to the vendor and extremely problematic for your business.

If you are lucky enough to find a vendor who gets the guessing game right, without taking advantage of the money-making opportunity to lead you right up the garden path, so to speak. You might want to go out and buy a lotto ticket because the odds are very low.

Technology is big business. If you step into transforming your business aided by technology, without your wits about you, it could cost you your business, and then some.

Here are my top 5 key things you absolutely must do to protect yourself before you sign any contracts with a vendor or transformation business partner consulting firm.

Number 1 — Know clearly what your business’s current state is in detail

Have a clear understanding of the current state of your business including clearly articulating your weaknesses, pain points and the problems you need to solve.

Stepping into a relationship with a consulting firm or vendor agreement at this time could be suicide for your business because no one knows your business as you do.

If you are not clear on where you are and what you want, you will either get what a vendor or consulting firm thinks you want at best, or at worst you will get the most expensive option they can sell you.

Unfortunately in the technology environment today the latter is far more commonly the experience.

The journey of business transformation is kind of like taking a road trip in your car metaphorically speaking.

To chart a course in your car’s navigation, the system first needs to know where you are. For, it is impossible to predict with any accuracy how long it will take to get to point B, where you want to arrive at your final destination if you have no point A.

Taking the time to understand where you are clearly as a business will mean that you step forward in deciding what you want to achieve, with an understanding of the distance needed to travel.

With this baseline in mind, it is much easier to become clear on the time and effort it will take to achieve your objectives.

If you don’t do the current-state work, you will be muddling through options from multiple vendors blindly, leaving yourself wide open to expensive additional costs later to rectify problems. These cause additional work through change requests that magically are not included in your contract, and can become incredibly expensive and very unpredictable.

Some vendors and consulting firms like to take the ‘we got you kind of approach’, and tell you there is no need to waste money mapping out your current state, because it’s going to change, and ‘we know what you need’. If someone says this to your organisation, run for the hills, and I am not kidding either.

If you don’t heed this piece of advice, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Number 2 — Know what you want to achieve through a business transformation program

Decide clearly what your vision is that you want to achieve from the transformation program.

The clearer and the more detailed the vision is articulated the more likely you will have success.

Beware of going in unprepared, because in today’s technology marketplace, it can feel like stepping into a cage with a pack of hungry wolves.

If you are unsure, a consulting firm or technology vendor is more than happy to recommend the most expensive options to the least prepared clients.

It happens more often than anyone would like to admit, as does the rate of failure in business transformation programs.

Like a good boy scout or girl guide it is always worthwhile to do the work to be prepared. Being prepared by knowing what you want clearly, can greatly reduce the costs in delivering business transformation programs. The statistics of failure of business transformation programs speak loud and clear for themselves.

Number 3 — Never allow one vendor to manage another vendor relationship on your behalf

This is absolute suicide to your business when you allow one vendor to manage another. Both vendors are in the business of making money. Allowing one vendor to manage another vendor simply allows them to work together to extract the maximum they can from your business, this is called vendor coupling.

Closely monitoring vendor engagement from within your organisation is absolutely essential. I cannot reiterate enough that never, ever appoint an internal person to manage a vendor delivery program that was recommended by a vendor or consulting firm that is going to make money from the delivery program. It is delivery suicide. Instead, the person must be a trusted internally appointed person who has no conflicts of interest and is held to account by a solid governance structure, to ensure that the program is being overseen with absolute impartiality and your organisation’s best interests in mind.

Don’t be fooled by all the assurances in the world by consulting firms or vendors selling you pitches with big stories about how they can get the best out of the vendor for you. I have seen this go pear-shaped more times than I can count. It is a very costly and often a nearly impossible thing to roll back once vendor coupling has taken hold.

Number 4 — Engage with your business to develop a specification document that details exactly what you want from a vendor

Before you sign a contract with any vendor to engage in any product delivery, make sure you have a clear understanding of what the vendor’s product can do for your organisation.

Engage those in your business who will be impacted in the process of vendor evaluation to help all parties understand what is possible so that together you can create a specification document that details exactly what you want from a vendor.

When you step forward with a vendor this way, all parties become much clearer about expectations and then the water is not so murky so to speak.

It is important to call out that many vendors think they know the best for your business for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they suggest this through experience, yet sometimes dare I say, it is for their own interests, rather than the interests of your company. It is important to recognise this and cut it off at the pass early.

No one knows your company or your people like you do. The success of technology product integrations into your business are reliant on the support and uptake from your people because technology doesn’t transform businesses, people do, when they engage and support new technologies as part of a new way of working.

Don’t be afraid to expect even the largest of technology delivery companies to deliver on your terms. You are the customer and it is OK to hold out for a vendor who is willing to deliver a product that meets your specific terms. Your organisation’s culture and your bottom line will thank you for it.

Many people have said to me that this is how the vendor does it. Yet vendors only deliver their way because you haven’t specified your own way. I have personally negotiated and known many other businesses to negotiate different delivery approaches very successfully. It is up to your organisation to take the lead and be specific with your expectations if you don’t want to be taken for a ride in more ways than one.

Get independent advice if you are unsure of how to step forward in vendor negotiations.

Number 5 — Get a non-biased business transformation advisory organisation to be your second opinion

There is an important distinction between a consulting firm and an advisory organisation.

If you seek advice from a consulting firm that stands to make money either directly or indirectly from the advice, you will not get the unbiased advice you need.

When choosing a separate advisory organisation, that doesn’t stand to gain anything except the fee for the advisory service provided, you are gaining invaluable advice that can potentially save you ten times the fee for their advice.

To get the right advice you need an organisation that can quickly understand your business, including problems to be solved, to help you consider the right options in your business transformation.

This advice mustn’t come from any organisation that will be or is aligned with the vendor delivering products or services as part of your business transformation, to ensure impartiality at all times.

At Enterprise Evolution we have more than 50 years of combined experience, with skin-in-the-game delivering business transformation programs.

We have seen all the mistakes that cost organisations millions of dollars, time delays and people impacts. Many of these could have been resolved with the right advice upfront, before engaging with a consulting firm or vendor.

If you are about to embark on a business transformation, or yours is going pear-shaped, reach out HERE for a free 30-minute conversation that could lead to gaining important advice, that may be the difference between success or failure, and help you to avoid the hidden costs that will blow the budget on the way.

We can save you wasting time and money, causing an impact on your people and bottom line, allowing for clarity in vendor engagement and a smoother ride through business transformation for everyone.

Believe it or not, there is often a smoother and easier way through your business transformation program, that can be engaging, enjoyable and profitable for your entire organisation in the long run.

Click HERE to learn more about what we do.

In the mean time HERE are some free mindfulness resources that you can access anywhere at any time.

You’ve got this!

Much love to you all.

The top 5 mistakes to avoid in business transformation programs that they don’t want you to know… was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yet, what we all should be asking ourselves is, who is deciding this ridiculous claim?

In my career of over 30 years, I have explored many industries, roles and transformation engagements. Through this, I have learned about more models, frameworks and systems than you could poke a stick at. Therefore, it is no surprise to me at all, that there is so much confusion in the transformation space. In reflection, I have come to a clear understanding that a single approach to change, has and will never, get your organisation over the line, particularly when going through a significant transformation program.

The global digitisation of organisations is running at high speed everywhere causing a shortage of talent, time and money, needed to achieve what often seems like the impossible. Couple this with the fact that many organisations are either playing catch-up or, even worse, being left behind completely, things are beginning to look quite dire indeed. The signs of transformational burnout are well and truly showing en masse. It is alarming, not only for workers but also for the viability of organisations all around the world long-term.

This hustle mentality has created a change monster burning through organisations, like some kind of crazed dragon out of a mystical fantasy novel, and we are burning people everywhere.

We are burning the customers, our citizens, and our employees. This pain is being felt far and wide in almost every place that the theoretical digitisation dragon is venturing. It then overflows into all our lives through stress, anxiety and depression. Yet, the sad part is that it does not have to be this way.

Have we become machines? Have we forgotten that people change organisations, not the other way around? Why are we pushing change, instead of empowering our people to lead change?

Change is not a thing. It is a fundamental necessity of life, including being human. Everything is in a constant flux of change. From the minuscule molecules that make up everything, including us, to the entire solar system. There is no escaping it.

To avoid change is simply impossible, and therefore a figment of our imagination.

Now we’ve gotten the elephant in the room, out in the open. Let’s talk about why the way we approach change, in general, is not working, and therefore it stands to reason why, when we implement change this way in business, it is not bearing fruit that is sustainable.

The first thing we need to understand is, that in the majority of cases, we force change on our people. Instead, of taking the collaborative approach of empowering and trusting them to lead us through change collectively.

Have we lost sight of our ability to trust? To enable transformation in a business, people themselves first need to embrace their own transformation.

If you are a leader in an organisation and are not supporting, both your own, and other’s individual transformation journeys through the process, you are missing the point. Untransformed people can’t transform organisations. It’s a recipe for failure. Transformation is uncomfortable. Think of the process a butterfly has to go through. Embracing the discomfort takes both an individual and team effort approach. In developing and fostering the skills in volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, transformation becomes both personal and organisationally enlightening if you embrace it fully.

Understanding this will help you to see why forced change does not stick.

Forced change

Let’s start at the beginning. We all understand the concept, that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink, right?

So why are we telling citizens, customers and employees, what to drink, how to drink, where to drink and even who to drink with?

The adoption of servant leadership for leaders in your organisation can be an absolute game changer to escape the need to force change. Forced change simply comes from the need to control, which is an outdated leadership quality. However, when you empower the people who work for you, you elevate them to partake in the transformation with you, instead of for you. Just this mindset shift alone has significant power in business transformation potential.

Short term viewing

You can’t force change. You might think you can in the short term, but inevitably it all comes back to bite you in the end.

People will change when they see the value and feel valued. It really is not rocket science. Some people may have a lot to gain from you when you think this way. That is a whole other topic right there though, for another day. However, in reality, embracing transformation is far more simplistic than the majority of us have been led to believe.

Manipulation, coercion, and pressure may look like they are bearing fruit on the surface. However, in reality, it’s like the iceberg effect. What you see on the surface, is likely less than one-tenth of what is actually below the surface.

What does the forced approach look like short-term in the workplace, below the surface?

Here are just some of the most common problems I have seen with forced approaches to transformation over the last 30 years:-

• A surface-level appearance of yes, whilst continuing to do things the old way behind the scenes.
• An underground group undermining the change, out of sight, rallying support to overturn the change when nobody is looking, or when the external change team has moved on.
• A disconnect that makes people check out, unseen can manifest in things like quiet quitting. They don’t call it quiet for nothing.
• Staff turnover, that conceals itself as pursuing other opportunities, where, even when leaving, people are not prepared to give truthful, constructive feedback, resulting in the detrimental undermining of the organisation’s brand and reputation in the marketplace.

These are extremely dangerous problems to have in your organisation if left unattended. To be clear, they are going unchecked en masse, hidden in plain sight right under our noses.

When you put in the time on your own personal transformation journey, these behaviours become obvious repeating patterns that are disturbingly not rare at all. We are talking about conditioning here, so we are not always talking about deliberate undermining. Most often, in my personal experience, these problems arise from a lack of self-awareness, which then masks your ability to see clearly what is going on around you.

Transforming, self-aware people transform organisations.

Better ways of working

Yet the reality is these problems can all be effectively eradicated, by adopting better ways of working in the transformation space.

These are just some of the many ways of working that will return greater transformational results, that have a greater capacity to stick in the short term, but most importantly imbed in the long term, ensuring ongoing success:-

• Work from a place of complete transparency when dealing with transformation and change, by being prepared to admit that you don’t yet have all the answers.
• Be inclusive in stakeholder engagement in the building of a transformation strategy.
• Understand the importance of people capability modelling as opposed to only considering business capability modelling.
• Create a collective vision through collaboration, trust, learning and empowerment.
• Work on transformation preparedness by understanding the right kind of structure to take your organisation forward, to bring transformation to light, considering that your current structure may very well not be the one your organisation needs.
• Build a transformation culture by supporting personal transformation within the organisation through a model of learning, risk-taking and innovation.
• Develop a solid and vibrant practice to embed change within your organisation instead of bringing in an external change team to push your change agenda. This empowers your people to buy in, grow personally and pull your organisation forward.
• Prepare your managers to become servant leaders through empowering leadership development, that fosters trust, empowerment, personal growth and an ability to be comfortably uncomfortable.

Pace is important

In the ever-changing world, we live in, it is easy for people to become change fatigued. We are often under-resourced, overworked and feel undervalued.

Why?

Because it often seems like change is happening everywhere, which can be quite overwhelming, leaving people feeling like the foundation under their feet is not solid enough to support them.

Therefore, it is incredibly important to understand how to build a solid foundation under your people, and to set the right pace in your organisation. Whilst monitoring and pivoting quickly, if and when, you inevitably get it wrong. Because you will get it wrong. Good change cultures embrace effective risk-taking, mistakes, and learning to grow from them.

When you get your organisation’s pace right, sometimes change looks like transformation, sometimes change looks like continuous improvement, and sometimes it looks like a reflective practice. Which in action is more like checking in and tweaking the process.

Moving through these cycles will continue to foster a healthy learning environment, where you all learn, grow and change together in a supportive and engaging way. The results are both measurable and helpful markers, in the identification of a great organisation, that is on the move to becoming self-aware.

No one shoe fits all

There can be no one shoe fits all approach to change. Do your organisation one of the greatest favours of all, by not aligning with anyone who subscribes to a single-pronged approach to change management. This failed, rinse-and-repeat style of a one methodology approach, is a dead certainty to produce failure, which can leave enduring scars across your organisation. I cannot overstate this point enough. I have experienced this style of change management first-hand, along with the fatal results that ensue. This approach is often expensive, falsely misleading your organisation to part with unnecessary and significant amounts of money. The results are not pretty. They create unnecessary and endless loops of re-work, frustration and confusion, often undermining any of the ground you had already made prior, setting you back further than you were, to begin with.

You can overcome these scars of the past by taking responsibility and accountability for the errors previously made. Then, seek forgiveness from your people and agree to forge a path forward together, bound in trust, respect, integrity and transparency.

As you take the transformation journey together, learn collectively as an organisation what works and what does not, whilst being prepared to utilise as many frameworks, methodologies and tools as you can to leave no man behind.

When you work collaboratively this way. You get to tap into the valuable diversity of varying perspectives, which are all too frequently, concealed at the depths of your organisation. These perspectives allow your organisation to shine a wider and brighter light on the overall potential collectively. One that you would not have seen, should you have developed a transformation strategy in silo, with only your executive leadership team.

Your people hold the torches that can shine a light far below the surface of that iceberg than the executive team ever could. Therefore, successfully illuminating the deep root causes of problems within your organisation, bringing forth worthwhile ideas that could almost make finding solutions feel effortless.

When we begin to work in organisations this way, efforts become highly productive, and time becomes well spent. With time and productivity highly valued in business, these gains become invaluable.

So, instead of using a tiny single match to attempt to light the way through the next phase of your transformation. Try tapping into the immense resources you already have within your organisation, your people, through better ways of working. The path then becomes much clearer, as will the tools your people discover on the way, to foster and imbed a learning environment deep within your organisation. Here, in lies a change culture that becomes the norm, just as it should be.

The infinite game

When you can adopt these new ways of working within your organisation, your people, customers and citizens may do a far better job than your executive could have alone, pulling your organisation forward in ways you may never have imagined possible.

Then you will have tipped the finite rule book on its head, and the Infinite Game will have already begun.

Does your organisation want to play the Infinite Game?

Reach out HERE for a conversation today to see how we can help you begin your infinite journey in your organisation without completely blowing the budget.

Click HERE for more information about what we do.

In the mean time HERE as some free mindfulness resources to help you on your way, available anywhere, at any time.

You’ve got this!

Much love to you all

Why your change strategy could be killing your transformation was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Digital transformation refers to the integration of digital technologies into all aspects of a business, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers. It involves leveraging digital technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), automation, and other emerging technologies to optimise business processes, improve customer experiences, and drive innovation.

Digital transformation goes beyond just implementing new technologies. Most significantly, it involves a cultural shift, a change in mindset, and a holistic approach to reimagining the way businesses operate. It is not limited to any specific industry or size of business. But rather, it is relevant to organisations of all types and sizes, including startups, small, medium, and large enterprises.

In the digital age, businesses face unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Customer expectations are constantly evolving. Competition is fierce, and the pace of technological change is accelerating at a rate unseen before now. Therefore, organisations need to adapt and transform to stay relevant, competitive, and agile in this dynamic environment.

Digital transformation offers numerous benefits to businesses, including:

1. Enhanced customer experiences: By leveraging digital technologies, businesses can gain insights into customer preferences, behaviour, and feedback, enabling them to deliver personalised experiences, improve customer engagement, and build better long-term customer relationships.
2. Increased operational efficiency: Digital technologies enable businesses to automate repetitive tasks, streamline operations, optimise supply chains, and make data-informed decisions, resulting in improved efficiency, cost savings, and better resource allocation.
3. Accelerated innovation: Digital transformation encourages organisations to embrace innovation and experimentation. This enables them to develop new products, services, and business models to meet changing market demands and stay ahead of the competition.
4. Enhanced agility and flexibility: Digital transformation empowers businesses to be agile and adaptable in responding to market changes, customer needs, and emerging technologies, allowing them to pivot and seize new opportunities.
5. Improved decision-making: Digital technologies provide businesses with real-time data and analytics, empowering them to make informed decisions and gain insights into their operations, customers, and markets.

However, digital transformation is not without challenges. It requires organisations to address issues including legacy systems, data security, privacy concerns, talent acquisition and up-skilling, change management, and cultural resistance to change.

Digital transformation is a strategic imperative for businesses to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. It involves leveraging digital technologies to optimise operations, enhance customer experiences, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable growth.

Embracing digital transformation is not a one-time project but an ongoing journey that requires leadership commitment, cross-functional collaboration, and embedding a forward-thinking mindset, that enables the changes long term.

Organisations that embrace digital transformation and adapt to the changing digital landscape, are better positioned to seize new opportunities, navigate challenges, and succeed in the digital age.

If we can be of assistance don’t hesitate to reach out HERE for a chat.

Click HERE if you want to know more about what we do.

In the meantime, HERE are some free mindfulness tools that can help you on your way, available anywhere, at any time.

You’ve got this!

Making friends with Digital Transformation was originally published in EnterpriseEvolution on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.