Tata Communications and
ABIS highlight the need
for C-level executives
to reassess their approach to leadership in light of global trends in
Unified Communications (UC), social media and globalisation. Bringing
together leading academics and business leaders
from ABIS and C-level executives from Tata Communications and its
customers, a recent industry roundtable highlighted the need for
leaders to be aware of the challenges around managing global teams, or
run the risk of alienating today’s
digital and globally dispersed workforce. With the emergence of UC,
technology was identified as a key enabler for collaboration, as well as
providing a platform for sustainable business practices.
Meeting over Telepresence, a fully immersive video
conferencing technology, across the UK, France, Brussels, Singapore,
China, South Africa and India, the roundtable discussed the traditional
role of the CEO and how technologies,
particularly Unified Communications, were transforming that role, as
leaders manage a global and always-on workforce. Professors from leading
international business schools
including Nottingham Business School (UK),
ESCP (Paris, France), EDHEC (Lille, France), TSM (Netherlands), Ashridge
and Royal Holloway (UK), and GIBS (South Africa) discussed the future
opportunities facing this space, with a number
of senior executives from Tata Communications and its customers. Future
social and economic development, made possible by video conferencing,
and its role in bringing needed expertise into developing nations,
especially in the areas of education and medicine,
were also key topics on the table. For these opportunities to be fully
realised, business leaders face some very specific challenges.
Professor Mollie Painter-Morland, Professor and
Academic Director, Nottingham Business School & ABIS, argued that
"The speed and complexity that characterises
global organisations puts conventional leadership theories under pressure. Today’s
leaders must be prepared to embrace experimentation and engage with
other stakeholders
to spontaneously co-create new visions and strategies for their
organisations. Instead of managing their organisations in a
demand-and-control fashion, they have to embrace more relational
leadership styles".
“The challenges of the modern leader are
compounded by the new social norms that technologies such as Unified
Communications bring,” says Vinod Kumar, MD and CEO, Tata
Communications. “Today, managers can run teams across
the world that, for months at a time, they don’t
get to meet with. Modern leaders need to adapt to this trend and change
their communication style to one that empowers remote employees. There
is a need to embrace
innovative and pervasive forms of entreprise communications tools such as
two-way video and the plethora of enterprise level social networking tools available today”.
The emergence of Unified Communications
technologies also brings with it exciting opportunities for speedy
collaboration and idea creation. During the roundtable, it was
recognised that this collaboration is allowing new forms
of systemic leadership, where remote teams work together and the best
ideas and the most suited people take a natural leadership role. In a
world where teams are global, leaders at every level must now understand
how to balance individuality and co-creation
across their teams. But this new environment also presents risks. Too
much information can lead to information overload and errors in
decision-making. These risks can only be managed by leaders who can
embrace the relational checks and balances that the right
blend of new technologies facilitate. Technologies such as unified
communications make new forms of stakeholder engagement possible and
allow for relational accountability to emerge. Furthermore,
technological advances allow organisations to expand their role
as global citizens, especially in emerging markets.
The discussion went on to highlight the changing
role of the CIO. IT spending was said to be shifting from the IT
department to the business, with the growth of cloud and the trend for
BYOD being evidence of that. Is the CIO
becoming more of an ‘orchestrator of services’ than the final decision maker, as
Enterprise IT becomes more consumerised?
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