Right now, a wicked combination of rapidly changing (and often challenging) societal expectations and technology (starting with data, AI and robotics) is changing everything about ‘work’.
In doing so, this wickedly hard-to-tame partnership is also changing everything about organisations and leadership. While some of the foundations of leadership will remain, there’s a new set of expectations that need to be addressed.
And the best CEOs know that this once-in-a-generation opportunity cannot be delegated.
It is the priority!
And they’re up for both the challenge and the opportunity.
What does wicked mean?
On one hand, bad or evil. On the other side, playfully mischievous.
And in urban dictionary terms – it lands as ‘very, cool or awesome’ .
So the word wicked is apt for technology right now, and also for people and organisations more broadly.
Tech can be good, bad, playful, helpful, and an awesomely cool competitive advantage.
People are the same.
Getting either, let alone both, right is very hard.
It is also essential to do just that. To rethink work, and therefore leadership, for your organisation.
What is the wicked combination changing?
Almost everything.
The work we do. Using more data, applying technology, replacing menial and administrative tasks with AI, replacing complicated and difficult tasks with AI. All at a pace of change unrivalled in history.
The way we work. Remotely, from home, away from home, from across the world, in open environments, with doors open, in teams with less layers and less leaders, with everyone expected to, and expecting to, lead. All at a pace, we’ve never experienced before.
An unprecedented layer of legislation and rules, that are often out of alignment or just plain don’t make sense together. Jigsaws of compliance that aren’t solvable but still need to be complied with.
With higher expectations of each other, of our leaders, and our organisations, and of being included, and being purposeful. We expect to be included, involved, engaged, and considered. On everything. But we concurrently want clarity, safety and reduced risk at the same time.
Almost every organisation has both their biggest challenges right now, and their biggest opportunities for now and the future, with the best path to come from applying technology while changing the way their team works.
With those opportunities and challenges comes ‘human-centred design’ – based on ‘asking what people actually want or need’ and using aggregated data to design for the customer and the employee, for their best experience and contribution, without anything (or as little as possible) being wasted.
Therefore people and culture and the way people work must be THE CEO’s top priority.
Surely if it’s the biggest challenge and opportunity, it must be THE priority for every organisation. And certainly, for every CEO.
Sadly. This is not the case. It often only makes the priority list in an emergency– when something goes terribly wrong – and other than that, is usually delegated to someone. Sadly, the challenges, opportunities, strategies, and consequences of this work rarely get the airtime they deserve or need.
What’s the norm?
Sadly, for the most part, the ‘norm’ hasn’t changed much for decades.
Almost every new CEO takes on the mantle with a big speech about genuine commitment to people and culture being incredibly important to them. The ‘I care deeply about people’ speech, as I like to call it.
But then, as Day 2 or Week 2 dawns, revenue and profit, and occasionally strategy, come calling. Two of their customer-facing/revenue-impacting executive roles need urgent attention (because no executive is perfect). Given that most CEOs are most skilled in growing revenue or profit, or designing strategy to do so, and have been well chosen for those exact skillsets, they leap to play their strengths – Revenue, profit, and strategy.
Appropriately and concurrently, they realise, it’s too hard to changeover three (or more) areas/executives at once, so they delay decisions on everything else. In the competition for their time and attention, we watch them delegate people and culture to that person in the corner who has less impact on customers and revenue and so can calmly handle that responsibility ‘for a while’. From looking at a random sample of CEOs I’ve watched change in the last five years, that ‘delegation for a while’, is normally for about three to five years. Status quo is assumed for that period.
Sadly, that correlates perfectly with the average tenure of an Australian CEO, which is 4.4years. So, that temporary ‘for a while’ decision, is for the full CEO tenure.
But there are exceptions!
What’s better than the norm?
Every so often, there’s a CEO and Executive who genuinely runs with the people and culture agenda front and centre. It’s the essence of who they are as a leader.
Interestingly, they don’t just lead it personally, they also expect it to be high on the agenda of every executive and leader on their watch, and at the very heart of their strategy as well.
And the best put it right alongside their consideration of ‘how we design the work we do’, ‘how we use technology’, and ‘how we meet or exceed what people are expecting’.
What does it take to be above the norm?
Well, we’ve watched what the above the norm group do, and this is the heart of it.
From looking at the above-the-norm CEOs – new and experienced – who genuinely lead people and culture personally and don’t delegate it, there are five common factors you see every single time:
1. Strategy is all about people.
Gone are the days when your strategy was a cold financial doc passed to some HR person to ‘make sure we had the team’.
The best CEOs know that the right team, and the right way of working, is foundational to, and at the heart of, a great strategy.
When everything else is copyable, people are your advantage. How they turn up, what they can do, and how they impact each other.
Plus, a great team helps you design a great strategy rather than follow instructions.
2. They change games rather than play them well.
In business, you often hear ‘the game changed’ – usually to explain those left behind. But the best leaders proactively change the game. They’re not fast followers, they lead.
They don’t want to ‘play the game well’, they want to change it.
They’re up to date with technology and possibility.
They’re rearranging everything to play a better – and often different – game. Everyone else can follow.
3. They are naturally human-centred, not lone rangers.
How could the work be done differently, with a heavy human/team-centricity to it. They’re open to new and different expectations from every stakeholder, all the time looking for an advantage or a point of difference they can respond to. This starts with customer-centricity aligned perfectly with employee-centricity.
They understand that every person has an impact on every other. That the best idea and plan in the world is useless, unless your team gets behind it.
They’re up for the complexity. Wicked problems need smarts, not arrogance. These people, smart as they are, walk into every room knowing they can learn from everyone in it. They’re smart and want to get smarter.
4. They own accountability, rather than delegate it.
Moderated, calm and clear on what they have to deliver to the organisation, to individuals, to the team. Up for the challenge, they role model accountability and in doing so, set the same expectation from every other person. No need to rescue them or cover for them. They know their part. They expect to bring their best. They expect the best from you alongside them. You don’t have to be perfect – in fact they assume imperfection as part of being human – but good, bad or at their best, they’re accountable. And always looking to support others who act the same.
5. They’re good at it.
They genuinely value people and culture, and its way more than that “I care deeply about people” speech. They enjoy the people work and gravitate to it. They prioritise it. They want work to work for others, preferably the whole organisation if possible. There is no greater priority than the team, and their success has been built on good people (which flock to them), good culture (which they role model), good leadership (which they define), and better ways of doing things because they are always open to improving.
Their clarity around the importance of people, culture and leadership is so crisp, that is feels simple and easy. Obvious even.
Of course, we all know from experience, it is the hardest leadership capability to develop, and probably the most important.
What happens when we get it right?
The best CEOs and leaders are getting up every day and tackling our greatest challenges and our toughest opportunities.
They’re open to rethinking the whole approach to work and organisations. It’s way beyond the discussions of the traditional HR function, or delegating the training to that person with that in their title. Instead, it is about organisation and work design, leadership roles and talent, and developing a whole different strategy about how your organisation responds to and centres on customers and people.
The rarest of CEOs and leaders right now, isn’t just doing this themselves, they’re encouraging their whole organisation to do the same. They’re not delegating people, culture and ways of working – they’re making it their top priority.
They can well see a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and they’re up for both the challenge and the opportunity.
And that’s the next article.
What is the future of people and culture in this new world of work?
(and a teaser – it’s never been more important).
