The Corporate Board as Digital Trendsetter with Three “P”s

Visionary board leaders have a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and identify the clear “destination.” 

The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, and the emerging trends as the digital shaper reinforce the digital characteristics of the business such as enlightenment and people-centricity. Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, have confidence and insight to navigate the business on the right path for digital transformation.

The corporate board director is the top leadership role; leadership is all about direction and change.With the accelerating speed of changes, digital leaders such as BoDs have to spend more time on pondering the future and perceive “what could be,” under the “VUCA” digital normal. A clear vision is a good combination of prediction，perception, and precision, and the corporate board can become a digital trendsetter with three "P"s.

The information-based prediction: We live in the exponential digital era, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of data that flows through the company at any given split second. Information Management involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of refining business insight, allows a company to move into a more advanced stage of digital explorement; helps to set trends and models that work best to meet the business goals for the long turn.

The corporate board plays a critical role in overseeing organizational strategies and enforcing business governance. The corporate board directors often present an in-depth knowledge about the business and expertise in multiple domains. With strong digital acumen, The BoDs can sense emergent opportunities and predict potential risks, provide an insightful outlook about what the future of the digital organization should be and what the existing problems and challenges are.

The digital acumen is also dependent on how effectively the corporate board can leverage information in decision-making. Information is all that is used to create the intelligence and shape a good strategy.  Some trends are more significant than others in their impact on business growth. Some corrections require more radical paradigm shifts with corresponding economic impacts or predictable political challenges.

Conscious perception: A leader changes the course of the business by seeing further than what all others see and by understanding issues from new angles, broader perspectives, or deep perception. People’s perceptions reflect their thinking capacity (the breadth and depth of the cognitive mind) and mentality traits (positive vs. negative; egoless vs. egotism, etc) Your perception affects your world and therefore what you project on the world, which in turn impacts others positively or negatively. Therefore, as the senior leader role, the corporate directors’ perceptions directly impact their breadth and depth of leadership influence.

Having a learning attitude allows you to gain cognizant of the different perceptions of the world, and having a positive attitude gives you the energy to overcome numerous obstacles on the way. The cautiously optimistic attitude with constructively negative feedback at the board level is perhaps the good combination to strike the right balance for leading the ship moving forward steadily. At the board level, when the collective perception is closer to the perception of the mastermind with a high level of cognitive maturity, hopefully, human society can accelerate collective progress significantly.

Forecast precision: To predict is to co-develop the future for running a better business. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed to forecast a new market, an emerging technology trend, or the business growth opportunities.

Besides information precision, the highest level of future sensitivity comes from appreciation of the whole situation which relies heavily on intuition and sense as well. Sometimes you need to be able to look for something “hidden,” which is not always so obvious, in order to make better assumptions or improve forecast precision. 

The goal of the business foresight and forecast is about predicting what will happen and step further, what should you do upon it. It’s the scientific management discipline of business orientation. Foresight is an ongoing conversation. Digital leaders such as board directors have to keep evolving and gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, and shape the future together for reaching the next level of the organizational maturity.

 The BoDs needs to steer the organization into the uncharted water and blurred territories; visionary board leaders have a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and identify the clear “destination.” The corporate board as trendsetter sets digital principles and policies, shape advanced mindsets, focuses on what the needs to look like, alongside the impetus and sense of urgency, and promote certain activities and behaviors toward the destination steadfastly. By focusing forward, businesses are able to judge the coming learning curves accurately and overcome numerous obstacles on their path smoothly.

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