a new reality

Eighteen years ago, we were thrilled when our brand new mobile phones allowed us to send text messages with more than 160 characters. Today we get upset if we don’t get WiFi and an endless selection of movies, on a plane, at no extra cost. Is the world changing rapidly? Sure!

Yet, if I think back to some of the work I was doing when I started my career 18 years ago, it didn’t seem that much different from what it is today. I was working for a large multinational corporation, and when I think about how we cascaded strategy, set targets, measured goals, and did performance appraisals, it all looked pretty much the same.

But we, as individuals, have changed. Access to information has helped us to evolve. We are better informed - we can draw comparisons, internally and externally. We know when something is fair or unfair, and consequently, we have less blind respect for authority. However, some organisations still keep their information secret; take salaries or bonus payments, for example. It’s an attempt to maintain control and to protect existing power structures. But as individuals, we know when organisational systems fail us; we know when bonuses are unfair, or appraisals are biased.

The rules of work are changing. As individuals, we have much more power today than we ever used to. The tools we have to work with are easily accessible and allow us to do stuff that was impossible just a few years ago. It is an exciting new reality, but it is different. There is more uncertainty, and it requires more from us.

Gone are the days of command-and-control structures. It’s no longer a case of - thinking happens at the top, execution at the bottom. In the adaptive organisations of today, thinking and execution happen at the frontline. It is a very different paradigm! It requires a different approach to leadership, at all levels of the organisation. Rather than being told what to do, frontline leaders need to figure out what to do. And senior leaders will need to shift from giving orders to connecting, empowering and enabling a highly connected network of small teams. It’s becoming less about commanding a big ship, but rather about guiding hundreds of small speedboats that have their own captains.