The theme of leadership is a recurring subject in articles, books, courses and lectures... together with the theme of innovation, we have a complete menu, full of steps to become a great leader, a charismatic leader, a servant leader, a 4.0 leader and another immensity of names, the question is... how much is what is taught actually applicable to the day to day within organizations?
Perhaps the answer is something beyond these magic recipes... aware that we are already immersed in the digital world, the word innovate with a focus on the future no longer makes sense, because life happens now! What? As? And how are the great leaders now working within the scenarios generated by the new economy?
Some of these answers I found when I participated in the International Congress on Technology and Organization, held by ECA-USP, among the various topics discussed, two caught my attention in a special way... one of them, presented by Jeff Prestes, CEO of NX Holding, who spoke about Artificial Intelligence and how the HR manager of Tokio Marine Seguros managed to mobilize all the employees in her sector to teach the Chatbot named “Marina” to work... she crossed the barrier of “I'm going to lose my job to a robot”, to... “Marina will help us with communication with employees, bringing quick answers and freeing the team for other more complex activities”, making the robot more of a member of the team .
Another highlight was the former executive and current director of the Bayer pension fund, Eduardo B. Donni, who spoke about the skills most desired by the CEOs of large companies, in the face of a scenario of changes caused by new technologies and among all the skills mentioned ... the ability to learn and accept that yesterday's knowledge will not be enough from now on, was certainly what most reverberated within the present minds.
What unites the speeches of the two professionals? Availability for change! When we talk about technology it is important that all professionals and especially leaders understand that what brought them to a certain level will not take them to the next level, no more.
Today we have within organizations traditional leaders, or rather... leaders with a traditional mindset and with a natural resistance to new and averse to change, with a focus on scarcity. This type of mentality, when shared by the company's top management, can and has generated great losses within organizations, such as what happened with Blockbuster and Kodak, which, due to the focus of their directorships being turned to the old economy, they were paralyzed in the face of new technologies and changes in the behavior of their consumers, leading them to bankruptcy... a subject so widely publicized within corporations.
Therefore, saying that you are an innovative leader is already part of the script of practically almost every professional, but how many are truly open and calm to welcome new technologies within their sectors?
In the example of the manager mentioned by Jeff Prestes, some of the professional's skills were: "flexibility to learn, communication and persuasion to engage employees and especially courage to innovate", because it is certain that with the advancement of the digital age, routine and repetitive tasks will be replaced by robots, which are faster, more efficient and cheaper than human beings, but we also know that technology generates a large number of jobs and that these vacancies require new skills and abilities, it is up to the leader to prepare yourself and encourage your team to prepare for this new job market.
The bottom line is how open are you to stepping out of the comfort of your past training and acquiring new skills? And encourage your team? Here is a key point, when talking about the quest to be a protagonist, it is crucial to understand that everyone will have to compete for new roles and follow a transformation process to enjoy the good opportunities of the future.
The important thing from now on is something besides learning to memorize... the leader must learn to think, to seek information, not to fear change and connect information... that is, the leader must put himself in a position to equality with your team and learn the real meaning of the word Co-creation.
Aware of all this, when we talk about learning to think, a leader must also be aware of the danger of technologies, because these are ephemeral and often what at first seems good, can actually cause great damage to the organization, which makes traditional leaders, or leaders with an old economy mindset, choose to remain in their safe haven... but that's a subject for another conversation.
Fernanda Silva is a specialist in Female Leadership and a columnist for Gente Mais Portal.
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