Innovativeleadershiplogic

Isn’t it a tough journey to celebrate 8600 blog postings - to pursue the digital way of brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The dawn of the digital era is partly responsible for many of the prevailing global problems due to increasing pace of change and continuous disruption. Leadership is an influence, which comes from the good combination of vision and communication; respecting, understanding people and driving progressive changes.

It’s the time to celebrate #8600 blog postings - Blogging is to pursue the logical way to communicate for envisioning, brainstorming, sharing, debating, innovating. As leadership logic nowadays is often nonlinear, with the right mix of induction & deduction; principle & discipline, methodology & practice. Innovating leadership is a tough journey with many accumulated steps and a few transcendent movements.

Communication logic: Communication is the leadership practice to amplify positive influence. Communication logic can be clarified by asking insightful questions such as: why do you need to communicate;  what's the clear message you should convey? What kind of results do you expect to achieve? What’s your communication style to amplify leadership influence? Is there such a thing as over-communicate, or under-communicate, can you strike the right balance? Should you apply an effective communication framework to improve communication effectiveness? Are there any special steps that need to be taken to ensure consistency in message delivery? Can you create a working atmosphere to allow free expression for innovation, or foster an environment where feedback and communication are based on reality and not simply what senior management wants to hear? Etc.

Effective communication is not just for gaining popularity, but to convey wisdom. Good communicators articulate; great communicators inspire; creative communicators analogize; wise communicators abstract, etc. In the organizational setting, there are functional dialects in different divisions; top leaders are fluent in multiple business dialects, with contextual intelligence; and keep communication flow with verification. They also discourage unprofessional communications such as gossiping or rumor-mongering, with the very goal to make communication as the media to amplify fresh viewpoints, not the channel to propagate negativity. In the global setting, great leaders are culture savvy, multi-linguists who are able to listen and tell empathetically; adapt and instruct proactively; influence and inspire intellectually. Clarifying communication logic is an important step in improving leadership maturity, building trust, framing & solving problems smoothly.

Problem-solving logic: The purpose of leadership is to drive progressive changes by solving problems and overcoming roadblocks on the way. Good problem-solvers dig into the root causes, look at the problem from as many perspectives as possible, leverage logical thinking to generate a variety of options for dealing with problems accurately and solving them effectively without causing more issues later on. In practice, the emphasis of logical problem-solving is in doing better pre-work such as assessing the situation and setting the success criteria; help to apply a set of well-defined principles, leverage structured methodologies, weight in varying decision factors, use efficient tools, take consideration of the range of options, select the premium solution which represents the best value-cost in terms of achievement of the business outcome in a structural way.

Many of today’s business problems are complex, to understand the scope of the problem, it’s important to see a larger system with interactive pieces and “conflict” goals; understand the interdependent components, provide insight into the emergent properties, and gain an accurate understanding of the overall situation. A logical scenario for problem-solving is a healthy process to gain a contextual understanding of the problem, have analytical reasoning skills to see which creative solution works best to solve the problem or generate more revenue, make continuous adjustment and improvement. Good leaders fix problems; great leaders prevent the problems from happening. They understand how to influence the emotions of employees and instill positive psychology, so people won’t generate new problems. Preventing problems and enabling continuous improvement requires cultural changes, leadership support, and iterative processes.

Knowledge integration logic: We are at the intersection of knowledge economy and creative economy. It’s a seamless integration of people, process and technology for running an information-savvy organization. However, many organizations or societies that are dominated by silo settings, outdated rules or knowledge, still get stuck at “we always do things like that” mentality. There seems to be the "expectation" that if you keep business running and it's working ok, and then knowledge, ideas, solutions, and advice will easily transfer cross boundary, and that piece of the jigsaw will fit snugly into somewhere else. It’s simply not the case; instead, there are conflicts or unhealthy competitions across the organizational hierarchy, there is the mix of new and old, orders and chaos, right and wrong, etc, different people, divisions, and organizations adapt to change with different speed. Thus, leaders play a significant role in integrating abundant information/knowledge, enriched culture, and multidisciplinary talent & expertise for developing a learning organization by encouraging knowledge sharing and innovative experimenting, connecting ideas but also people seamlessly.

Knowledge does not stand still, and knowledge is not an isolated fact but interdependent. To generate fresh ideas and put great ideas in usage for innovating business, an essential role for knowledge integrators is the need to have an integral knowledge management approach, getting access to knowledge effortlessly, and encouraging interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. Knowledge Management is a lot about diplomacy, engaging and persuading people to take part; it takes a long-term negotiation and cross-functional collaboration to keep information flow, knowledge flow, and therefore, the business flow; refine and integrate a variety of cultures to ensure its cohesiveness and maturity for leading progressive changes.

The future is in our hands. The speed of change is significantly increasing in the digital era. Leadership is about focus, providing direction, both for oneself and others. It is also about alignment and integration. Highly effective leaders need to share a clear vision, communicate by using the right language, demonstrate strong logic, influence skills and discipline to problem-solving. Collectively, we have to reinvent what leadership is with new normal and new approaches, develop the best and next practice to accelerate its maturity.

Posted in: Communication,Future of Leadership,Leadership Master