Are you digitally deluded?

Editor's Notes

• #8: Aaron Dignan: Digital Isn't Software, It's a Mindset User centred Collaborative Innovative Agile
• #11: QUESTIONS?
• #16: @auchard – reuters tech correspondent @michellenichols Reuters correspondent at the United Nations in New York (far from home in Australia). Alistair Smout @asmo17 Journo at Reuters, writing on markets, politics, and sometimes funk. Annya Schneider @annya_do Communications at Thomson Reuters Foundation || @TR_Foundation
• #18: There are four major societal trends that are forever transforming the way we live. As they continue to grow we face a stark choice – change the way we lead or become irrelevant.   Demographic trend = multiple generations working alongside each other, each with demands and experiences that the others cannot comprehend.   Expertise trend = expertise is now found as much outside as inside the organization.   Attention trend = organizations have to fight harder than ever to capture the attention of employees and customers as information and interaction sources lay claim to limited time.   Democratic trend = likelihood of leaders having direct control (rather than dotted lines or no lines at all) over their resources is remote.   Whilst a leader’s role has always been and will remain the creation of engagement, alignment, accountability and commitment to the organizational cause, in this new landscape the tools they use will need to change. Where once they relied on clarity, plans, roles and money to achieve these aims, they will need to find new tools.   Clarity is no longer feasible as a source of engagement. It is either impossible to provide or requires a one-sided view of the world (the leader’s) to be constructed. This will not do for social engagement. Simplicity, on the other hand, by providing simplification (i.e. simpler ways of operating) and coherence (i.e. a purpose for the effort) will play the role clarity once had. QUESTIONS?
• #20: All Hail Digital Case Study - BOL Case Study – Financial Services Case Study – Civil Service Twitter Nothing Changes Morrisons – home deliveries (Jan 2014 first home deliveries newspapers HRP
• #21: Simplicity, on the other hand, by providing simplification (i.e. simpler ways of operating) and coherence (i.e. a purpose for the effort) will play the role clarity once had.   Plans are only worth drafting if they are likely to be followed. When conversations are constantly helping the community to make sense of its environment, plans play no part in helping alignment. It is a narrative that provides the common language and story that ensures a community is aligned.   By defining accountabilities, roles are limiting to a certain set of circumstances. In an ever-changing environment, success is defined by having a community that is able to do whatever it takes to achieve an outcome, irrespective of whether an individual has been given a specific role or not. Our focus needs to change from roles to tasks that need to be fulfilled for the narrative to stay alive.   Finally, whilst money might secure involvement it will never secure commitment. It is contributing to the community and helping it grow (i.e. love) that keeps people committed to the efforts of the community. Understanding what people love and helping them find an outlet for that love is what will make leaders successful.
• #22: Pulley & Sessa (2002) argue that “technology is intensifying a number of paradoxes that are stretching leader’s capacities”, and from their research offer five that stand out: Swift and mindful – the increase in speed of everything that happens in increasingly connected organisations compromises the quality of decision making, eroding the benefit of the time efficiencies. Individual and community – more digital interaction reduces human contact and thus social cohesion and increases isolation. Top-down and grassroots – digital places huge pressure on organisations that are hierarchically structured. The more rigid the design, the greater the tendency and ease with which voices can be heard from any level in the organisation. That means the voices from below are audible, and ignored at your peril. The relationship is fundamentally changed, whether you intended that to be or not. Details and big picture – ever more data may be useful, but it eats time. How to get the balance right? Flexible and steady – change in organisations was arguably never linear. Digital technology amplifies that pattern. As someone in a digital agency said to an OD Practitioner in a story I heard recently: “We have to be liquid because flexible is too rigid”. 
• #23: “Whilst a leader’s role has always been and will remain the creation of engagement, alignment, accountability and commitment to the organizational cause, in this new landscape the tools they use will need to change. Where once they relied on clarity, plans, roles and money to achieve these aims, they will need to find new tools.” From Emmanuel Gobillot’s Leadershift: Reinventing Leadership for the Age of Mass Collaboration