Digital Leadership and Vision

 My classmate Aileen, saw yesterday's post and wrote me about it. She wanted to say how digital leadership requires agility and adaptability, and although I agree with that, I think it goes beyond that.

Earlier, Teddy, Scott, and I were discussing these same necessary attributes for digital leaders, namely, adaptability to innovation and agility. These, I agree with you are very important to digital leadership. Changes happen so quickly in our technologically driven world, that digital leaders need to be ready to adapt, and adjust to new technologies and innovations, . . . But even more than that, I think they need to provide a clear, concise vision that too must be agile and adaptable. 

In a management class, I took 15 years ago, we worked in the server all workshops on “vision” and how leaders establish and use vision to help organizations. They likened “vision” to crossing a river. The tools were the rope and the other equipment you might use to get across the river. The people crossing the river were the employees naturally. Their equipment and other stuff were the organization's process, goods, products etc that had to get across the river, and the launching and landing spots were just starting and endpoints. The vision was what the leader would point to and say, we are going there. How do we get there? Naturally, this brought up a lot about how he would have to look upstream to ensure that when the crossing occurred they landed in the spot they wanted, the nature of the challenge and overcoming adversity, etc. 

When I think of this in terms of comparing digital leadership and traditional leadership I think instead of crossing a river at night. In many of the schools and operations we practiced in the army we had to cross rivers, streams, and other danger areas. These were always much harder at night. No lights, sounds are louder, enemies can be closer without your knowledge, confusion all over the place, on and on, the night crossings were always much more difficult and it required great planning, practice, and luck. I think of this with digital leadership. Now, if a new innovation comes along the digital leader must establish that vision and hopefully have a team that can operate as well in the dark as they do in the day. And if things change or challenges arise, they can adapt quickly to that challenge and either maintain or communicate and establish a new vision to the team.