Leading When Change Is The New Normal
In 2013 I gave a talk at the Eduserv symposium called How to Lead When Change is the New Normal and followed it up with a piece for Computer Weekly on the same topic. Steph Gray from Helpful Digital and Meri Williams now CTO at Monzo also gave keynotes at Eduserv that year. Between the three of us we were exhorting a fairly traditional audience to embrace a new future with technology. And all three of us emphasised the core importance of trust in the new digital age. For my part I was trying to explain that leaders now need to be “I don’t know leaders” not least because the knowledge they relied on in their careers to date would not be sufficient to help them deal with the new challenge of digital disruption.
Now in 2020 we find ourselves firmly in the place where change is the new normal and it will be foolish for organisational leaders to image that when this challenging time passes things will revert back to the way they were.
We are already experiencing the difference between reality and rhetoric when it comes to network capability. We know that for years Ofcom have been raging a battle with the ISP’s to provide accurate information about actual speeds. In 2019 they brought new rules into play to force ISPs into giving customers realistic information on their home broadband speed. As more and more of us will be working from home over the next couple of months it will be interesting to see if our networks are really fit for purpose. Sufficient perhaps if only one individual is working on a laptop but if everyone is home particularly with children then data hungry devices are going to chew up your speeds pretty quickly. Italy for example has seen an increase in internet use of 30% over the past two weeks.
And don’t think the challenges are confined to rural areas. I have several friends in London who would stuggle to deliver online training via video link with their broadband/wifi provision. Nor is it today or yesterday that really good networks have been a problem in London. They were a problem as far back as 2009 when I was working as the Director of Digital Projects in City Hall. Not enough has been done in the intervening years to really make sure we are best in class when it comes to connectivity. Within the next couple of weeks we will all come to expect the fastest connectivity possible as utility not luxury. Making out that providing wifi for free is a luxury or a perk (like most hotels currently do) is going to seem like a quaint story from yore.
I’m hoping that the Covid 19 situation provides a burning platform that will not be wasted by the public sector. Now is the opportunity not only to catch up but to leap frog. Last week I visited my GP in Bolton for a routine examination and we were chatting about how the surgery was coping. She told me that they were shifting to telephone consultations only and were hoping to be able to use video and photographs in diagnostics. “We tried using Skype a little half heartedly a couple of years ago” she said “but we are definitely going to need to do it properly now”. But cue immediate problem. Their mobile signal in the surgery is poor and their wifi practically non existent. I suggested that they bring in some boosters for the WIFI her response? “Oh we have no control over that it’s a separate contract”. The public sector must be in charge of its own destiny in all matters technological and not bound to outsourced contracts that make it difficult to act quickly and with agility. My GP was also having difficulty enabling video on her PC “why don’t you just use your own mobile” I asked. “Can’t do that because of data privacy issues” she replied.
But as always its down to people. We would be much further ahead in our capabilities for home and remote working if our organisational cultures in the UK were not so hierarchical and mistrustful. It amazes me that even younger folk I meet who are responsible for managing teams can be tremendously controlling demanding that their teams be onsite at all times — and of course they must be learning that behaviour from the top. I recently heard from some former colleagues who had a nightmare boss that insisted on having every one of the team physically around him. As a result none of them knew how to use tools like Google Docs, or Slack. I spent some time last week quickly getting them up to speed so that they could also demonstrate the virtue of home working to the recalcitrant boss. “This is terrific” the boss quipped on his first outing on Google Hangouts “this means you can all start at 8.30 instead of 9.30 cos none of you will have to travel”. O.K. so possibly not the best interpretation (“we can get more out of you”) but hey if it achieves the goal we will take it.
Leaders now need to fully embrace the need to let go and let go quickly. They need to ensure the safety of their staff and trust that their people will reform as virtual teams and they need to empower them to do so. Where “official” technology can’t be provided quickly they need to be pragmatic and allow people to use their own tech (mindful of data privacy issues). They need to act as conductor now not controller. And they need to understand that they themselves need to learn and if they are not prepared to learn themselves then they need to empower their people to learn for them.
In our work at UP Accelerator we are used to physically convening talented entrepreneurs together with our sponsoring partners (currently GCHQ and The Landing) and our masterclass speakers. We’ve had to pivot and pivot fast to ensure that we maintain our momentum and dynamism. Yesterday we spun up our Zoom rooms and my colleague Steve and I spoke to all of our cohort proposing the way forward for the next couple of weeks. We will be delivering our masterclass content through Zoom then encouraging zoom breakout rooms for cohort activity then regrouping for Q&A’s. We will also be using Slack and What’s App and providing one to one coaching for the cohort as required. We will be providing the cohort useful content in advance so that they are up to speed with the subject area in advance of the Masterclass giving them an opportunity to deepen their individual knowledge. And we will use the learning from this to define and shape the next GCHQ accelerator going forward. If any of you know or want to suggest formats that you recommend for this kind of learning tip Steve or I up on our Twitter accounts we need to learn from each other now more than ever. Oh and check out Helpful Digital’s Twitter stream for some useful information on home working/video conferencing etc.
