Three Aspects to Build Flexible Digital Workplace

Building a flexible digital workplace is able to “navigate” change and deal with the complexity of the present business new normal effortlessly.

Compared to traditional organizations with an overly rigid hierarchical setting and classic management style, the digital workplace is more dynamic, flatter, and engaging. A digital organization is an organic living thing with attributes such as open communication, “ownership,” “flexibility,” and “creativity,” etc, as well as the hyperconnectivity with its digital ecosystem.

Faster to change: Great opportunities, dangers, and disruptions are around every corner, how successful the organization is will directly depend on the changeability of the business. Having change curve awareness means that you understand how organizational change capability is underpinned by people, processes, and technology; as well as how much business capacity is really required for the change effort you are kicking off. Being flexible to change is the digital competency for either digital professionals or the organization as the whole. The business changes could be puzzling, particularly when you know the individuals or groups of people have skills, knowledge, and experience to make the change and yet they resist. Change Management is about understanding the psychology behind the change, also setting clear business goals and plans, taking iterative steps to make change happening, and sustain it. Building a flexible digital workplace is able to “navigate” change and deal with the complexity of the present business new normal effortlessly, so change happens all the time, and the business can deliver products/services/solutions faster and increasing marketing share, to catch up with the digital speed.

Alternative ways to do things: Being flexible is all about figuring out the alternative ways to do things. One of the biggest challenges in this complex digital world with high velocity and uncertainty is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge, and different ways to solve many existing and emerging business problems. Sometimes there is no "one" answer, there are some or many. For many old and emerging problems, you have to challenge automatic assumptions that something needs 'fixing. In the data-abundant digital world, it is important to leverage information & logic but also channel creativity for solving tough business problems or challenges. More specifically, thinking creatively about a problem requires being close to the problem, having context for understanding the problem from different angles, and figuring out the alternative ways to shape better solutions. Flexible digital leaders and professionals do not focus on hierarchy but on ideas, innovation, openness, and problem-solving. They enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration and embrace collective insight. Together, these flexible teams, with extensive experience, are resolute, responsive, adaptive, able to speed up the decision-making process, an alternative way to do things.

Resilience to survive or thrive: The fast growth of information and the disruptive nature of technology brings both abundant opportunities and unprecedented risks to the highly interdependent business today. Though the meaning of the word "flexibility," in general, more refers to a physical movement capable of being bent, without breaking; from the psychology perspective, it is about the adaptation to the changes and resilience to survive, or at the higher level of maturity, resilience makes the business robust and antifragile. With resilience, individuals are able to bounce back from setbacks or failures; organizations can overcome the continuous digital disruption, fail fast, and fail forward. It is the ability the respond to change proactively, dare to act courageously when facing difficulties, stay positive, focus, and flexible. Antifragility is not just about recovering quickly from setbacks but even getting better, select the best options, with self-healing capability.

Building a flexible and creative working environment can improve employee engagement, productivity, and innovation. The digital workplace is like a magnet to attract and retain the best talent. It enables the organization to get all the right people with the right capability in the right position to solve the right problems from right angles all at once, and ultimately achieve high-performance business.

Posted in: Digital Master,Digitalization,Talent Master