Leading in the Digital World: A book review by Bob Morris

Leading in the Digital World: How to Foster Creativity, Collaboration, and Inclusivity
Amit S. Mukherjee
The MIT Press (March 2020)

How to become a leader in a workplace culture driven by digital technologies

For centuries, human beings have tended to view technological breakthroughs as threats to their employment. No one questions the impact of the printing press, the plow, steam power, mass production, the Model T, the McCormick Reaper, the computer, commercial flight, atomic energy, space flight, the Internet, and the Web. Each also created entirely new jobs and millions of them.

That has been especially true during the emergence of digital technologies such as these:

o Artificial intelligence (AI)
o Sensors and the Internet of Things (IOT)
o Autonomous Machines — robots, cobots, drones, and self-driving vehicles
o Distributed leaders and blockchains
o Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality
o Connection of everything and everyone (e.g. 5G networks and satellite constellations)

In this exceptionally thoughtful and thought-provoking book, Amit S. Mukherjee shares what he has learned from wide and deep research as well as from wide and deep experience that will help prepare his reader “to lead in environments that prize developing and executing new ideas over making existing ideas faster and cheaper. Instead of decreeing lists of ‘five things to implement immediately,’ it will address mindsets, behaviors, and actions you should embrace, explaining why these matter. Personal change takes time, so it will also help you prioritize issues relevant to you right now.”

Individuals as well as organizations can become hostage to what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny oi  custom.” In this same vein, Warren Buffett urges us to avoid the chains of bad habits that are “too light to notice until they are too heavy to break.”

What to do and how to do it? In Parts I and II, Chapters 1-8:

o Mukherjee identifies and explains seven ways digital technologies change the context for leadership.
o He offers six Principles that reveal how/why today’s digital technologies differ from those in the past.
o He explains how/why they extend beyond the boundaries of organizations.
o He suggests six ways “the Principles are reshaping the context for leadership.
o He explains how/why new realities make inclusionary leadership “an existential need for companies.”
o He also suggests how/why leaders must be able to navigate “the in-between spaces” that experts avoid.
o Leaders and their organizations “truly collaborative” in networks that are literally a “win” for everyone involved.
o Finally, when moving to center stage, leaders and their organizations “must embrace empathy, shun the pursuit of uniformity, and acknowledge that an average person with a computer can outperform a smart person without one.”

There are three other points I wish to stress. First, Mukherjee wrote this book for people at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise who have countless opportunities each day to take or join initiatives that add value to their organization as well as to clients or customers it is privileged to serve. You don’t have to be a C-level executive to think like one…if (HUGE “if”) you have some cutting-edge thoughts about creativity, collaboration,and inclusivity.

Next, there are no IT or HR issues, only BUSINESS issues. However advanced digital technologies may be, they will never replace people who understand how to use them as high-impact enablers.  With all due respect to the current state of AI, only people can determine the WHAT and WHY in business. Improvement of HOW must be constant.

My last point is suggested by two quotations:

Charles Darwin in 1859: “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

Alvin Toffler in 1984: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Amit Mukherjee provides an abundance of information, insights, and counsel but the value of the material in this brilliant book will be determined almost entirely by how carefully a reader absorbs and digests it, then applies whatever is most appropriate to their own situation.  Almost everything you, the reader, need to know is in Chapters 1-10 and then Mukherjee explains how to build your own personal leadership philosophy.

The business world needs your energy, integrity, talent, and ideas…and it needs them ASAP. So there’s important work to be done NOW. Why wait?

 

 

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