 Challenges to build a culture of excellence and innovation are many for entrepreneurs and business leaders alike in our fast-moving environment. Across relentlessly shifting social, technological, and cultural boundaries nothing seems to stick and barriers often appear insurmountable. Some of the barriers are external, many are internal.  External barriers are often political or macro-economic and can materialise in, for example, currency volatility and regulations. Nevertheless, the biggest threat to excellence and innovation is often self-inflicted: fear of failure, micromanagement and internal politics, lack of a shared vision. Let us look at the most pressing internal challenges, hampering enterprises and organisations become more agile. 
Imagine a global knowledge worker, 32 years old, a Spanish national, originally from Morocco - let’s call him Imad. Imad is currently based between two locations, Barcelona and London working as a frontend developer on different teams face-to-face and virtually. In this dynamic world of work, feedback one year in arrear would be meaningless to him. Imad could simply not do his job. Instead, he seeks an agile culture, in which he can connect, interact, and by that receive timely feedback. What are the challenges for the leaders?
In order to be able to foster an agile mindset across the entire organisation, leaders need to take a fresh look at culture.  Commonly, culture is being understood as values and norms, Often, these values and norms are negotiated in the boardroom and disseminated through senior management across the organisation. It is known as corporate culture. The list of failures of organisations who have used this approach is long. Yahoo among many. Why is that? Culture is not manufactured in an isolated room. Quite reversely, it is the texture that people bring to the organisation, the physical organisation and the virtual organisation alike. Culture breathes. Culture changes all the time. Culture is negotiated in social interactions at the coffee machine, in the canteen or in chats on collaboration tools such as Slack. So, its meaning is defined by the people of an organisation. They shape what an organisation “is”. They create and recreate organisational culture based on who they are and which bits of their identity they bring to the organisation. And this is exactly where we need to anchor excellence and innovation. Only people who bring their full selves, their full identity - not just a fabricated copy of a self, desired by the organisation can deliver excellence and shape innovation. Those who can
So in brief, the leader’s responsibility is to give people the opportunity bring their full selves to the workplace. Leaders need to move from corporate culture to organisation culture, both mind and body. Practices such as opening the floor and letting go are difficult issues for many leaders - after all, unlocking excellence and innovation is a grassroot approach. Watch the Cyberconnecting Webinar Replay.  In the ‘Future of Work’ the ‘team’ has become the heart of innovation and excellence within successful organisations. The ‘agile’ way, having reached beyond the software development bench, emphasises team self-management, collaboration, quick and early stage functioning results, and an immense adaptability to emerging business realities. The importance of agile methodologies for the benefit of excellence and innovation is by now well understood. Nevertheless, with a steadily growing number of global knowledge workers – an anticipated 1 billion digital nomads by 2035 – agile methodologies need updating. Behaviour-centric identity management is the secret sauce to adding value to modern agile in an increasingly diverse marketplace. “High frequency quality interactions get everyone on the same page and working in sync”. Collaboration is enacted through interaction, which in turn is enacted through identity. Through raised levels of identity awareness, the workforce is able to build robust work-based relationships across generations, geographies, functional, and organisational boundaries. By that, internal and external teams can put customers at the centre of community collaboration in order to deliver value to customers faster. It is essential that all people in the organisation understand the value of human connections as well as their own role in shaping their organisational culture. The focus has to be on the role of identity as the key ingredient to achieving excellence, from individual innovation, through to innovative practice at team and organisational level. Scaling agile across the organisation is an iterative process well beyond the IT function. With individuals and teams as ambassadors and a with a clear action plan in place, it is feasible to successfully embed these practices as part of your digital transformation programme. Cyberconnecting WebinarPart 1: Innovating through identity-based collaboration
In the first part of the webinar, we provide an overview of the complexity inherent in innovation and discuss how maximum innovation comes from agile, self-managed teams. Part 2: Understanding the importance of profiling yourself, groups, and end user/customers to create social impact In part 2, we look at how workforce identity and corporate brand shape the foundation for organisational innovation – why is it so important to create belonging within and across teams. Part 3: Achieving innovation excellence and what really works In the final part of the webinar, we give examples of application and best practice in innovating for success in the agile market-place realities. |
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November 2018
P.E. AbrahamDigital transformation advisor | Privacy expert | Cyber anthropologist | Author Categories
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