How Does the Change of Information Flow Transform Your Leadership Strategy?
In the age of digital transformation, the strategy of leadership needs to evolve. Transforming the leadership strategy becomes pivotal to the success of the digital transformation for the business and the employees. In the past years, we have seen organizational changes to adapt to the environment. Strategies of adapting have been moved from an emphasis on becoming as efficient as possible in a niche to having dynamic capabilities. These capabilities come from innovation, speed, and agility. To better handle the complexity of the change, the organizational structure looks more like a network of collaboration, instead of bureaucratic hierarchy. In this article, we want to discuss ways of working together and establish new strategies of adapting and leading the change to make organizations more innovative, responsive, and agile.
Adapting the new way of information flow
Information flow has changed in the digital age. Modern organizations tend to have a collaborative network communication. The information flows in all directions, and both decision-making and innovation happen in both top and down directions. The company needs to prepare to engage in issues on a 24-hour basis, and there is no time to think through carefully. The need for communication is constantly changing as the world around us evolves. We need to devise ways to respond to the change proactively, whether using technology or restructuring the organization. Implementing a decentralizing strategy to establish a more horizontal organization, instead of a traditional hierarchy, will help information flow become more natural and easily distributed. Having a more horizontal structure does not mean that there is no supervision. In contrast, it requires stronger leadership because the supervisor needs to proactively find barriers and remove impediments to ensure the flow of communication is clear.
How to clear the Impediments to Innovation
When the environment is changing rapidly, we need some ways of comprehending, sensemaking, according to Karl Weick, is the process of "structuring the unknown." It helps us to understand the ongoing complexity of the world. Sensemaking is about letting go of your existing models of the world while keeping track of those changes, and mapping those changes is a core part of what sensemaking involves.
According to neuroscience studies, once you have an idea, a model, a schema of the world that becomes wired into the brain. In sensemaking, we want to make that change, the very pattern of thinking, seeing, and understanding, and have an entirely new perspective on the change that has occurred. Deborah Ancona, Professor of Organization Studies at MIT Sloan, gave a great example of sensemaking. Bose's product development team was working on new technology and recognized the market trend towards smaller speakers. However, the market trend was counter to Bose's corporate mentality that smaller products did not have the ability to project the audio quality for which Bose is known. But, through sensemaking, the team was able to prove there would be market demand for the product. Decision-making from bottom to top was the most difficult in the traditional organizational structure since innovation should be bi-directional. In the end, the team secured the resources to develop a mini speaker. And that mini speaker is now a best-selling product.
The Mindset of Leadership
Forming a team or teaming is a process of putting a collective intelligence toward solving the problem at hand and establishing a process of improvement on the ideas. When a new team is formed, new products, new processes, and new business models are created with the entrepreneurial leader's guidance. But to continue to innovate and lead the team, the leader needs to have the right mindset to go forward. Leaders believe that people are not fixed in intelligence, talent, and leadership, and individuals can grow and develop with a learning mindset. With this perspective, you believe that the teammates have the potential to improve and move upward. A learning mindset embraces challenges and invites learning opportunities when encountering a setback. The ways we lead, operate, and grow have a significant impact on the team and depend on our mindset.
Devising a New Leadership Strategy
The traditional hierarchy was a way of operating and how information flowed in a pre-digital age. Now with the non-stop communication and working with, and through other people, teams, and organizations, an ecosystem of collaboration is formed, and the traditional organizational structures simply do not work well anymore. There are many areas needed to be considered to cope with the changes. A better way of decision-making communication must be developed to become more responsive to the environment. With transparency in the process, it helps to motivate the team members as the decision rationale becomes clear. The annual budgeting process may not be sufficient to fulfill the business needs on innovation, and leaders must devise ways to allocate just-in-time resources. Ensuring the flow of information in modern organizations becomes crucial to innovation. With the right mindset and a sensemaking quality, you can become an exceptional and transformational leader in today's ever-changing environment.