“A leader is best when people barely know he exists when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” (Lao Tzu, 4th century BC.)

If nothing else, over the past year, we have been force-fed the fact that doing business using traditional models and concepts will get us nowhere. It is painfully clear that if we want to succeed in the coming years, we will have to make fundamental changes to our mindsets and capabilities across all levels of our organizations.

The concept and practice of Agile Leadership have been with us for some time now but the uncertainty, volatility, and dynamism of the external environment precipitated by the pandemic, has ignited the urgency of its application. Outdated traditional, hierarchical models are simply not able to provide answers to overwhelmed and worn-out CEOs and C-Suiters. Businesses desperate to steady their feet with a guiding light have begun to adopt many of the core principles of agile leadership – for example, developing a high tolerance for ambiguity, co-creating goals, pushing decision-making to those at the epicenter of the issue, learning how to learn faster and developing self-managing teams.

Let’s take this one step further. Technology is perhaps, today, one of the biggest drivers of change and simultaneously provides organizations with mechanisms to grasp the best opportunities for improving their bottom-line. In an era, which has overnight obliged businesses to become ‘virtual’, it is time to fully explore the concept of ‘agile digital leadership’ – the marriage of Agile Leadership with all the possibilities afforded by the Digital space.

Interestingly, it should be noted that some attribute the genesis of the ‘agile’ concept to the rise of ‘agile software development’; so you see, the term already carries the DNA of technology. But, in practice how does this type of agility work?

How can business leaders effectively develop and integrate new mindsets, behaviours, and technologies to enable profit and growth in 2021 and beyond?

Join us at our next TGL Caribbean C-Suite Conversations on February 5, 2021, to find answers to these questions and more. Complimentary registration at: caribbeancsuite.com.

 

Elizabeth Terry