to master the human capital challenge include having change leaders who can drive transformation in the fast paced and fast changing workplace reality. Imagine organizations that have recognized the need to build the future workplace today and to prepare their leaders for ongoing and rapid change. Imagine organizations having leaders who are able to inspire, share knowledge, and provide resources to their teams while creating a work environment that is open, creative, collaborative, and focused on transformational experiences for the employees and the clients.
The leadership skills that have been used for the past decade are not the skills that are going to create next level growth or expansion for organizations. We need change leaders with upgraded operating systems to inspire and create new approaches, new processes, and new ways of connecting to create an organization with happy employees.
Customers have become right-now consumers who want what they want and they want it now– not yesterday! Amazon Prime and its two-day delivery is still not fast enough for some of the drone-loving customers who want their deliveries today. Years ago the customer could wait. I remember a situation when I worked in banking: I was right out of high school and was promoted from bank teller to side-counter customer service. This was in the 1980s when customer service was not a “thing” and a customer came to the side counter and I jumped up ready to serve him. My co-worker who had been in customer service for years yanked me back down and said, “Don't get up so quickly or the customers will always expect us to jump.” I was in my teens at the time and remember thinking how silly that was. Fast forward to today and the customer IS king or queen and drives all solutions from the business perspective and also from the individual consumer perspective. In fact, I find that customer expectation of stellar service has gone up so high that there is a pervasive culture of never satisfied customers out there. So what does that mean for organizations? It means that the continued and increasing demands from customers are creating the need for adaptable and customized solutions. The ability to provide creative and innovative customer care requires a change of mind-set around what constitutes good service and a change in customer delivery processes. We need change leaders to transform customer processes.
Innovation is something that keeps many CEOs up at night as he or she struggles with staying one step ahead of the competition. An innovative culture requires teams of people to be thinking in new ways that are continually focused on creative solutions. Leaders and employees who may have been working in a culture in which new ideas were not valued are finding the new economy and new workplace demands creativity and innovation mindsets. The approaches, strategies, and processes all need to change in order to shift to a culture of innovation. We need change leaders to focus and create environments and structures that support innovation and creativity. Organizational executives need to value new ideas and create opportunities for employees to share ideas, to openly spend time creating, and to be rewarded for innovative product ideas, customer service improvement ideas, employee engagement ideas, and more. Many organizations are establishing forums and labs for innovation; for example AT&T and the AT&T Foundry™ innovation centers are fast-paced and collaborative environments. AT&T and technology providers work in the AT&T Foundry to deliver applications and services to customers more quickly than ever before.
The AT&T Foundry works in projects combining business, design, and technical resources. Since its launch in 2011, the AT&T Foundry has started more than 200 projects and deployed dozens of new products and services. Projects focus on areas of significant business or technology interest and typically involve external start-ups, innovators, entrepreneurs, academics, and inventors. Projects are organized in short sprints designed to determine success or failure quickly.
Another area that is undergoing massive change approaches is the operational excellence of the organization overall. Many organizations have policies and procedures that were established decades ago and that may or may not have relevance to today's business reality. When our team conducts organizational assessments with our consulting clients one of the questions asked is, “What are the policies and procedures you have in place that are not serving your actual objectives?” A company may state that their objective is for absolute customer satisfaction and yet the operations and processes hinder that same objective.
For example a company that has been in business for over 30 years or more may have had a policy to give absolutely no refunds to the customer, and today that same company has a direct competitor who does provide refunds for the same product. Does the policy need to change? That may seem like a stupid question and yet there are many organizations in which the operations and methods have not been changed, updated, or modified to meet the current customer or employee reality. We need change leaders in operations to lead operational excellence and to help drive transformation in the organization.
The corporate brand and reputation focus from the survey mentioned earlier is a key area for company success in the next few years. It used to be that you could manage brand and reputation by “spinning” content to ensure the best possible image was put forward. Now with social media and outspoken customers a brand slipup can go viral in seconds. Larger corporations have had social media staff for the past five years focus on brand and reputation management by focusing on Twitter feeds, YouTube video comments, and more. In addition, individuals within companies are recognizing the need and value to have a personal brand to promote skills for new jobs, for promotion opportunities, and more. I read recently that new parents are buying URLs for their babies either prior to birth or right after birth to ensure brand protection. The need for rapid adaptation to the brand and reputation challenge is an imperative. We need leaders of change to lead everyone within the company to be brand advocates, to leverage all channels of strategic brand promotion, and to see the interconnection of company brand with each individual's representation of the brand.
A Need for Breakthrough Transformation
All the items discussed here provide insight into the areas that CEOs will be focused on in the next few years. However, there are new trends that are shaping the future of work and that have to be factored in when looking at driving transformation in the workplace.
The trends that are impacting business today are increasing technological innovation, Generation Y impact on the workplace, and cloud computing.
Let's look at the impact of technological innovation: 10 years ago if someone told you that you would share most of your life both private and personal for the world to read, watch, and hear, you would have said they were nuts. We now live in a 24/7 information-packed reality where we can find out virtually anything we want about anyone at any time. Who would have thought that we would be living more public lives, building online communities, sharing photos, videos, and personal stories, communicating, collaborating, and accessing information all through the use of technology? It is the impact of technology that is radically changing the way we live and work, and organizations must be adapting to the technological revolution that is upon us. The need for organizations and their leaders to guide the change of technological transformation is absolutely essential. Eric Qualman, the creator of Social Media Revolution videos, states a statistic that in the next few years we will not have a Fortune 500; rather, we will have a Fortune 100. That is, the rapidity with which technology is impacting business and the ability of businesses to respond will determine whether the company will still be relevant in the next few years.
The organizations that are focused on technological transformation are well positioned to be successful and relevant. Often when I speak to groups of traditional organizations (those who have been in business for over 30 years or more) I notice that there is an obvious opportunity for many of these companies. The obvious opportunity is to get everyone in the company on board with the technological solutions that can be utilized. I was facilitating an executive retreat with a company that had been in the telephone business for over 20 years and now wanted to rebrand to let its customers know that they were now a technology company. When we were going through the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis with the executive team, the vice president of sales stated that she did not need to know the technology because her team had full knowledge of it. I stopped and looked directly at the VP of sales and then the CEO and said nothing. I waited for the CEO to say something to the VP and then I said, “Let me get this straight. You are rebranding to be a technology firm and yet you don't need to know the