2009 | Jack Ricchiuto | DesigningLife.com
2009 | Jack Ricchiuto | DesigningLife.com
The Future of Leadership in
a Connected World
2009 Jack Ricchiuto
Think about the incredible number of ways people are connected today: in person, phone and conference calls, online and phone personal and network messaging, blogs, online videos and podcasts, distance learning, electronic organizers, social network communities and websites, virtual workspaces, shared files, email, and collaborative websites.
We have unprecedented access to potentially all of the real-time and archived knowledge we need to be effective every minute of our work.
This reality is a major game-changer in how we think about leadership in our organizations and communities.
Before today's technologies, pragmatics dictated a world divided into two classes of knowledge and information haves and have-nots. The pre-technology leader was someone who by definition had to be and in the best cases was the ever-cluefull uber-brain directing and correcting the clueless.
Now with everyone's access to everything a leader could know - and faster and more - there are no excuses for the incredible inefficiencies of a two-class world.
In a connected world, we don't need leaders to be any group's "ultimate" decision makers or subject matter experts. When all of us have more access to knowledge and information than any one of us, together we can make better and faster decisions than any one of us can - no matter what power, position, or pay rate the organization entitles them to.
In a connected world, the leader has three valuable tasks.
1. Alignment facilitator
In a connected world where the knowledge and information playing field is now level, what gets in the way of engagement and performance is no longer a lack of knowledge and information, but disconnects among those who have it. In a connected world, alignment is speed and wisdom.
Alignment occurs when a group decides together how they're going to coordinate, organize, and quickly adapt what they're doing on an ongoing basis individually and collaboratively. The leader's work is to convene and facilitate the conversations that can make this possible.
2. Learning facilitator
People have the right knowledge and information at the right time when they are learning. At the root of learning is asking the right questions at the right time. In a continuously shifting environment, learning is the most important skill anyone has.
The leader's work is to help people know what the right questions are in their work so they are doing the learning that will make their engagement and performance efficient and successful. As we now know, learning organizations outperform all others every time.
3. Culture facilitator
Culture is the collective quality of relationships in an organization, community or network. The culture shapes its structure which determines its capacity for collective learning, wisdom, velocity, and agility.
Two of the most profound influences of culture is the lens people use in their work and the kind of trust at play in their relationships. People do their best when they are consistency focused on their strengths, passions, successes, and possibilities rather than weaknesses, grievances, disappointments, and problems. They are most collaborative when they interact with authentic trust. Authentic trust is the practice of unconditional generosity.
The leader's work is to facilitate conversations that help people stay focused with the right lens, and practice authentic trust with one another.
The new leader in a connected world is a facilitator of alignment, learning, and culture. In a connected world, any leader who still clings to the role of all-wise-one who issues inspiration, instruction, and direction is now an obstacle to full engagement of their teams. Teams now have the potential to access all they need to know 24/7.
This paradigm shift has profound implications in how we prepare, develop, select, and engage leaders for the future of our organizations, networks, and communities.
What we need now are leaders who have the strength and passion for helping everyone create ongoing alignment, learning, and culture that makes work its own reward and a new future possible.
