Technology Change and Leadership - Essay Example

? Technology Change and Leadership TECHNOLOGY CHANGE AND LEADERSHIP When deployed intelligently, technology can endow a company with benefits that would allow it redefine competition and make significant improvements in productivity. The pace of innovation in the technological environment is transforming the way companies operate with new business models relying, on technology, to integrate servicing, global product development, and supply and customer chains. Successful business change, however, is elusive even through consultancy with government, professional bodies and industry groups. This paper seeks to identify key challenges for organizational leadership in getting value from change enabled by technological advances. For CEOs and other leaders it is crucial that they possess a dynamic understanding of technological advances and ensure that, they are primed to capitalize on any new opportunities that it presents. They specifically have to keep track of external environmental developments in order to manage their implications for their own internal change programs. Visible and active leadership is needed to avoid lack of satisfactory exploitation for business benefits and extended timeframes for implementation. Technological integration is a major business transformation that involves organizational design, process change, and behavioral change. Business executives need to see these changes as technology-enabled and not as technology-driven. Business leadership needs to obtain value from technology through the creation of transformational value instead of the implementation of projects (Ackerman-Anderson & Anderson, 2010: p33). A number of challenges, including the need to revise and reconfigure business practices, processes, and people in parallel with technology changes, faces this. Additionally, they need to provide clear articulation and central purpose of the implementation program and its business benefits. Equally, they should avoid passing the responsibility for its implementation to specialists who could cause distortion of the purpose. Organizational politics and game playing are also a risk to the target. These diversions will most likely reduce implementation pullout time frames and the exploitation potential. These are normally attributed to individuals although analysis shows that they signify a standard response to poor leadership (Ackerman-Anderson & Anderson, 2010: p33). This has several implications for the CEO. He or she must set the purpose inherent in the implementation in relation to mission and strategy of the company. He/she must also comprehend the difference between holistic and incremental organizational change since with holistic change, one cannot reverse engineer (Ackerman-Anderson & Anderson, 2010: p35). Leadership must also be clear on the differences between implementation and installation since the former needs both organizational and technological change. Success for future leaders is also dependent on conviction and vision. Finally, as the project gains steam, leadership also needs to make space for others. Negative and positive feedback is vital at this point with rewards and a simple “well done” being vital (Ackerman-Anderson & Anderson, 2010: p35). To lead technological change, business leaders need to build capability for the ongoing change (Bates, 2010: p41). Under this requirement, leaders face a number of challenges. First, while individual projects undergo implementation from the bottom up, transformational portfolios require top-down development. The tendency to build the latter bottom-up risks the inclusion of redundant initiatives. Top-down portfolios should be used only for technological and organizational change that is mission critical. Adoption of a strategic perspective needs the leaders to articulate their overall change policy such as highlighting reductions in budgets and headcounts, as well as structural realignments. Time wasting will normally result from project attrition and CEOs need to deal upfront with crucial issues after their identification. Another challenge for the leadership is the assessment and anticipation of their readiness for change (Bates, 2010: p41). This is impacted by the personalities and skills of the leadership team coupled to fatigue from the impact and number of recent initiatives for change. The CEO must not confuse benefits appetite with appetite for change. An implication of these challenges for the company leadership is that they need to ensure that the organization pursues a top-down approach to development of the portfolio development (Bates, 2010: p42). They are also required to articulate their overall portfolio and, where possible, include the tricky bits like escalation responsibilities and procedures. This acts to improve credibility and realism. The CEO is also required to monitor the organizational readiness to change on the level of individual managers and the organization. They should engage support for those under pressure without compromising their portfolio. Additionally, the company’s leadership needs to celebrate wins with their employees. Finally, they must ruthlessly prune suppliers or partners who are underperforming (Bates, 2010: p43). Another vital consideration for leadership when handling technological change has to do with the creation of an open communication climate (Carter et al, 2009: p51). Leadership has to manage several challenges including the tendency to pay lip service to communication that may result in cynicism and skepticism from the company’s employees. The CEO is also faced with the challenge concerning the definition and communication of the company’s vision and outcomes, as well as recognizing that it is a continuous task. That takes time but reduces future implementation problems. The final challenge under cultivation of open communication has to do with the double-edged nature of responsibility delegation. While too little delegation can alienate the employees, too much runs the risk of the leadership seemingly abdicating their responsibilities as leaders (Carter et al, 2009: p52). These challenges to open communication have several implications for leadership. Their behavior and action will have more impact than their words. They also need to act on and be seen to act on the messages they receive, where appropriate, via upward mechanisms of communication (Carter et al, 2009: p60). They also need to walk a fine line between charismatic and inspirational communication without appearing as if they will heroically save the company single-handed. Business leadership should be on the inside focusing on change programs, and should be supportive and deeply committed to the changes, including when things go wrong. Additionally, they should avoid being viewed to be outsiders, approving the budget and waiting on the results, or being viewed from above as sponsors or champions observing from a distance (Carter et al, 2009: p60). Finally, they should reinforce the outcomes instead of task achievement with it being vital in retention of focus to deliver business benefits. The business leaders must also be adept at the management of confidence and risk. A number of its own challenges face this (Johnson et al, 2010: p41). The leadership being open concerning their level of experience and knowledge of technology enabled change is one of the challenges. They are required to engage and complement the ability in existence. Another challenge involves putting a strong team together to provide the right advice that the CEO can trust. They are also required to be aware and monitor the risk appetite for risk inherent in their board. In addition, projects drift and assume a life of their own. Having the courage of putting brakes on these types of projects and looking for results in short scales of time acts as a major challenge (Johnson et al, 2010: p42). The final challenge has to do with setting the tone for supplier management. These challenges to the management of risk and confidence have several implications for leadership. The first is that they are required to assess and implement the various mechanisms mitigating risk and realize that external changes and risk are always present and could be overwhelming (Johnson et al, 2010: p71). They also should factor in that context is vital, and thus, define the level of freedom so that their plans are aspirational, as well as realistic. Business leadership should also back technology calls should the strategic imperative be found to be irresistible as it is normally a judgment call. Engagement of the right team to ensure the steering of implementation and managing of projects are implications for leadership. When employees do not deliver, they must be cut-of. Finally, business leadership must ensure that the procurement team reflects the requirements of the business enterprise and possesses the flexibility and rigor to encourage and enforce the suppliers (Johnson et al, 2010: p71). Finally, in order to manage technological change, business leaders are required to build personal capability while learning about IT (Khosrowpour, 2011: p56). Under this requirement, there are several inherent challenges. The leadership needs to be open to an array of learning methods and networks. Being aware of what to benchmark and the way to keep up to pace with changes happening in the external environment is another challenge. The leadership also faces a challenge to widen their learning networks in a way that is focused instead of relying on serendipity. CEOs also face challenges in making time available, as well as ascertaining that employees in all levels have the ability to create organizational change (Khosrowpour, 2011: p57). These challenges portend various implications for business leadership. For one, development of knowledge today for management of change in the technological sphere is vital rather than necessary. Most business leaders discover that keeping up with technological advances is challenging. This state of affairs needs to be managed as a matter of course (Khosrowpour, 2011: p63). To do this successfully, the leadership needs to create and participate in knowledge mechanisms of personal learning and sharing. Finally, business leaders will be required to go beyond usual contact networks. Most CEOs utilize global listening posts since a broader set of inputs can come up with ideas that are more novel. Most organizations are involved in many negotiations every day internally and externally. Effective negotiation is vital for more than the structuring of systems integration systems and or large ITO or BPO contracts (Lorenzi & Riley, 2012: p12). There will be important interactions with suppliers, end users, customers, and partners daily. Additionally, many of these interactions involve contentious issues working through differences. To enable negotiations occur in a beneficial manner, the organization has to lend support via integrating technological advances into their operations (Lorenzi & Riley, 2012: p12). For leaders to embed negotiating capabilities in the face of technological changes, they have to begin by creating a context for the organization. This context needs to be driven always by messages sent by leaders, what the leaders intend, what they measure, and what they pay attention to (Lorenzi & Riley, 2012: p14). If leaders consistently send the message that they should use the technological advances at their disposal to squeeze suppliers, then they will attain a negotiating behavior that is consistent with the mindset. Should they send a message that the most important factor has to do with reduction of ownership’s total cost with certain suppliers or the creation of new value with other suppliers, they will set the context for a changed approach to negotiation. Employees will pay attention to these cultural messages, so the business leadership needs to ensure that they are sending messages that are congruent with the outcomes required. References Ackerman-Anderson, Linda. & Anderson, Dean. The change leader's roadmap : how to navigate your organization's transformation. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2010. Bates, Tony. Managing technological change. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass , 2010. Carter, Louis. Ulrich, David. & Goldsmith, Marshall. Best practices in leadership development and organization change . San Francisco : Pfeiffer , 2009. Johnson, Michael. Hanna, Donald. & Olcott, Don. Bridging the gap : leadership, technology, and organizational change. Madison : Atwood Pub. , 2010. Khosrowpour, Mehdi. Information technology & organizations : trends, issues, challenges & solutions. Harrisburg : Idea Group Pub., 2011. Lorenzi, Nancy. & Riley, Robert. Managing technological change : organizational aspects. Berlin : Springer verlag , 2012. Read More