Leadership in the age of digital transformation


Like a storm sweeping across the horizon we are in the midst of a great epic of change. The age of digital transformation is here, and yet it is about far more than the ability to shop online, chat, tweet, app, or watch the latest TV shows. It is about an epic social transformation that is quickly sweeping the globe.

In an ironic twist of fate, while businesses, governments, and media empires have the most powerful tools they’ve ever had to shape and form public feelings, opinions, and choices, it is the individual that has become the ultimate power broker.

With a sea of information, choices, and potential social connections that reach across the expanse of our world, the individual is awakening to their own inner power. A new generation of children are growing up knowing nothing else but the reality that they are the creators of their own reality, that they have the power to shape and control their world.

Traditional leadership

And yet while we all rush to flatten the hierarchies of our organizations, try to have the ‘outside in’ perspective on our business, and rush to engage with our customers via social media, we run past and forget about the crucial role of leadership. With the ‘social’ fad that is catching fire in many businesses, the word ‘leader’ has become synonymous for ‘bad dude’.

The traditional form of leadership that is (unfortunately) still active in many businesses is the idea that the best rises to the top, and the top decides what’s best for employees and customers alike. The idea that somehow quality, value, and importance is always at the top of a hierarchy is the cornerstone of traditional economic and social models. And businesses still jealously guard this model by trying to ‘own’ customers, protect intellectual ‘property’, and try to protect their position as market ‘leader’.

The new definition of leadership

The old model of leadership is dead – injured by the digital transformation, and ultimately doomed by the social transformation that is following close behind. While businesses and their management still try to be ‘leaders’ according to the old model, the carpet is being pulled from under their feet by a new generation that is aware of a very simple idea: everyone is a leader. Each individual is their own leader, ultimately deciding what is best for themselves.

It Is this new definition of leadership that has yet to penetrate into the boardroom, shareholders, and the current generation of managers. While our current leaders rush to push a digital transformation agenda that includes apps, the cloud, social media, and co-creation, they fail to recognize the need to change their own ideas of what it means to be a leader. Digital transformation is but a tool and an expression of something far deeper that is forever changing our world: social transformation.

The new leader

We are entering the social age after having just caught our breath at the beginning of the digital age. And this new age needs new ideas about what it means to be a leader. Leadership no longer means ‘I know better than you’, it now means ‘I recognize the leader in you’. The new age of leadership will be characterized by social networks formed by trust between teams in companies, between companies, with customers, and with social and community partners.

We no longer lead companies by force of position, but rather we lead by inspiring trust in the individual customer and employee to choose to create our company, our product, and our market each and every day. We lead by harnessing the power of social transformation to create and give purpose to our digital transformation. The new leader is a storm of change that feels the dance between leading and being led where the ultimate power is trust. No more bad dudes.


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