Leadership in a Time of Continuous Technological Change: Align, Strengthen, and Mobilize Your Team

By Bar Schwartz

Digital technology is rapidly challenging the way we do business, interact with our communities, and learn about the world. Due to this, leading change in your digital organization now comes with unprecedented tools and platforms to make your teams the most effective they can be. Leadership in a Time of Continuous Technological Change has arrived at this pivotal moment and is your roadmap for this exciting, evolving journey.

Author Bar Schwartz introduces a holistic framework for leaders to take the reins in the digital Wild West. Achieving your team’s goals in this new environment will require high creativity, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a diversity of perspectives to solve problems that have never before been tackled. Roles and responsibilities have morphed, and what made you successful in the past may no longer apply.

Leadership in a Time of Continuous Technological Change is an unmatched resource fit for our new decade. Through analyzing detailed case studies, you will see how understanding your identity paves the way to achieving emancipation, capability, and autonomy. Ultimately, you will be empowered to lead with clarity. Your team has everything they need to excel. Discover how alignment and clarity can support you in launching your team to new heights.

What You Will Learn

• Examine case studies of different situations that can arise within a team and go through lists of takeaway questions that leaders can start asking to gain quick wins
• Adopt an agile mindset while taking into consideration the existing culture in the organization
• Communicate and align on expectations and goals with your team in a time of organizational change

Who This Book Is For

Emerging leaders who are dealing with change or leading change and seek to increase the level of alignment and clarity for their people and themselves

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apress
• Release date: Sep 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781484263006

Book preview

© Bar Schwartz 2020

B. SchwartzLeadership in a Time of Continuous Technological Changehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6300-6_1

1. The ACE Model

Leadership That Brings People Along to Clarity and Alignment

Bar Schwartz¹ 

(1)

Berlin, Germany

Digital technology, digitalization of traditional business models, and technology-led companies have affected the way everything is done and how we perceive certain ideals, especially in the world of business. It does not matter if you are working in an organization that develops software products or not, digital technology impacts you. It impacts your customers. Therefore it impacts you. It impacts the expectations of your stakeholders, namely customers and employees. This is a digital age. The impact of digital technology is going to grow and accelerate every year. Especially for the young, utilizing digital technology is not optional, it is a commodity. For your business, being adaptive is the new status quo, not a trend.

Anyone who wants to successfully lead individuals and teams in this digital age needs to use a potent combination of entrepreneurial mindset and a diversity of perspectives to problem-solve effectively. Some will call it the future of work; others will include it under agile or lean transformations. Fundamentally, it is about change and how effective you are in leading people through change while utilizing your existing resources.

Why Are You Here?

You are, most likely, a leader in an organization that is going through a change or about to go through a change, probably due to digital, agile, or lean transformation. You see this friction between the world you know and the world you are getting to know. Processes are not enough. People keep pulling things in different directions. They are not working on the same things or towards the same outcome. You care about it. Maybe it even frustrates you. Predominantly, you want to solve it.

Me too! I faced this problem so many times in my career. As a change catalyst, I often joined organizations in transition. Whether I was the change leader, coach, or enabler, it was always the same problem: lack of alignment due to lack of clarity on roles, the work people are expected to do, the outcome of the change, the product vision, the company strategy, the company values, and more. So, what do you do? How do you solve this? This book is about alignment. It is about how to create it and how to get your people to contribute best during a time of change.

To achieve this, I developed the ACE model. It stands for

Emancipation: Set people free from having to constantly rely on you.

Capability: Enable people to get the job done.

Autonomy: Enable people to own their work.

In short, it is a model that aspires to support you in clarifying what is it that you want and align better with your people so that they can work towards that goal. Ideally, I hope you have a journey while reading this book. I hope it will help you to understand where you are and how to get what you want.

The ACE Model

The ACE model is an exploration and clarification process that you, as a leader, can go through with the people you lead when you kick-start a change process. It is tailored for digital change processes such as agile and lean business transformation. The goal is that everyone is clear and aligned on what is needed in order for a transformation and change process to succeed. The model exists to support you in leading this process. Furthermore, as you clarify, you will discover the prerequisites for your change.

This model is different from other models out there because it focuses first on how you need to think. It is not a recipe book with step-by-step instructions. However, it is an actionable framework that offers you a perspective and concrete steps you can take based on your unique situation.

The ACE model process focuses on achieving clarity . It consists of steps that build upon each other and it poses questions that will help you lead with clarity as you take everyone along with you towards alignment. In many ways, it is a coaching process because each question is meant to start a conversation that creates awareness for all individuals involved and generates learnings that will enable you to succeed moving forward.

Forward is subjective, though. You will have clarity on where you are and where you can go rather than a concrete plan on how to get results. It means that you will have an alignment, not necessarily an agreement. There might be a huge gap between your desired outcome and where you are. Nevertheless, if you do not have clarity, you do not have alignment. It is a matter of luck if you get there. Hence, moving forward with clarity.

Clarity As the Core of the ACE Model

William Arthur Ward once said, If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it. Clarity , in the context of this book, is all about translating an abstraction into something precise enough to imagine so that you can take the right actions to become who you need to be to succeed.

Change occurs in your life, either intentionally by you or externally by your environment or others. We are all familiar with life changes such as starting a new job, dating a new person, and moving to a new place. At first, we might have an idea of what is going to change. However, clarity, what changed and what is expected of us due to this change, evolves over time.

When you start a new job, you ask questions such as what is my role? and what does good performance in this organization look like? When you start a new relationship, you ask questions such as what do they like or dislike? and how do I fit with this new other person? When you move to a new place, you ask questions such as what can I bring from my previous place and what should I buy new? and where should I shop, work out, park my car? What questions do you ask when you kick-start a digital change process?

It is normal for us to ask questions to gain clarity about a job, relationship, or a move. When we have sufficient information, we feel prepared for the change. Then, when we go through the change, we feel more confident, aligned, and enabled. We know what to do.

This is not the feeling most people have when an organization, department, or team goes through a digital transformation. The more common feelings are fear, anxiety, and confusion. Mostly, what needs to change comes down to how we need to change and why we need to change. Furthermore, most companies have a document or training that describes the change, primarily focusing on the new job titles, work processes, and tools. However, these documents often remain either too abstract or too focused on process-related details. Therefore, you might understand the concept and the overall process but have no idea how your day-to-day work is going to change and what is expected of each individual to make this change successful. For example, you might want people to work together collaboratively as a team on a concrete product. Also, you might want individuals to help each other instead of starting new work in their function. However, due to traditional understanding of roles, performance, and deliverables, people might think they did a good job if they finished their part of the work rather than ensuring the whole team finished a concrete work increment and created value.

Clarity is a state, not a destination. Therefore, to achieve it, you must ask the right questions so that you understand your situation and yourself better. You also must keep asking questions as your situation changes. It’s the same for the people you lead: clarity is about having a conversation about what matters. This is the core of the ACE model.

Identity As Step Zero

We all see the world through our own lens. Thus, it is common that the same situation is perceived differently by different people. For example, one person may be excited when it starts snowing while another may complain about the cold temperature or the mud. It depends on our attitude towards snow.

Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. If you learn to see a snow storm positively, you may welcome it. The same happens with change. When you see it positively, you are likely to welcome it. However, if you do not, you are likely to resist