Virtual Development Day: Watch our recorded sessions

Click on the link below to enter your details and get access to the recorded sessions from our first ever IML ANZ Virtual Development Day. You will be redirected to the sessions upon submission.

Watch now

Why your leadership reputation is a catalyst to business growth

When you run your own business – and you’re not a large operation – the basics of success might seem simple. Business booms when more people want to buy from you, existing customers want to stick with you, and your staff are happy to work for you.

But anyone who’s run a family-owned or small to medium enterprise will know that driving business success is a complicated matter. After all, it takes an investment of your time, effort and resource to grow the business, keep your employees engaged and build your brand and reputation.

Plus, the smaller your operation, the larger the effort, time and resource required to stay competitive in any market.

What if you’ve overlooked a highly valuable driver in achieving business growth, employee engagement and customer loyalty? Your leadership reputation. It’s no wonder that legends of the business world hold it in such high esteem. Warren Buffet identified it as an even higher priority than profits.

This principle applies just as strongly for small to medium enterprises. The difference is that it is you, as the owner and leader, whose reputation is the anchor for your business.

Think back to when you started your business. A large foundation for what it is today would have been because of your contacts who became your first clients. Your knowledge and expertise evolved into your current products and services. Your vision is the glue that formed your first team.

Your leadership reputation might have been instrumental in setting you up but why is it even more essential for running a successful business into the future?

Here are just three reasons:

 

 1. Your leadership impacts how you attract new business

Reputation is sometimes misunderstood. It’s often thought to be the same as your brand. However, unlike your brand, your reputation is not something you create and then project. The public formulates reputation based on what they know about you.

Investing in your leadership reputation is a worthwhile venture. In fact, one study found that a good reputation can increase a customer’s intent to purchase from you by up to 6.3%.

The challenge for busy small business owners, however, is that you can be so consumed in the day-to-day tasks that you might neglect setting time aside to build on the elements that influence your reputation. Also, being the boss can sometimes mean there’s no one keeping you in check about your leadership skills.

Dr Travis Kemp, an organisational psychologist, independent company director and adjunct professor at the University of South Australia’s Business School, faced the same challenge.  “Because I run my practice and lead organisations, there are very few people who I actually have to report to,” Kemp recalls.

But Kemp understood the importance of being accountable for proving to the public that he was a capable leader. So, he sought accreditation to benchmark his leadership standard. He needed to find a way to make his skills, “understandable and acknowledgeable by other people… An external validation and accountability for [his] experience.”

Strike a balance: While caring for your reputation as a leader is a must, finding the time can be difficult. That’s why accreditation is a great solution. Find a professional designation that doesn’t take away too much of your time from running the business but at the same time validates your skills, experience and expertise.

 

2. Your leadership impacts employee engagement

Starting a business is an exciting time of discovery. But as your business evolves, you and your staff will face new challenges. As a leader, your people will look to you for guidance and solutions when facing these issues.

That’s why it’s important for business owners like you to ensure your leadership skills are up to standard. If your staff can’t trust you to pull them through tough situations, then you can’t expect them to give their best at work. And when they fail to give their best, business performance suffers. Research by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Workplace Leadership found that many leaders fail to master fundamental leadership skills and unsurprisingly, more than 40% of Australian businesses do not meet their targets for return on investment and profitability.

Unsurprisingly, Kemp recommends investing in leadership skills. “I think leaders’ impact can be incredibly positive when it is directed in the right way, to the right people at the right time. Leadership has always been part of my life. I have been an active leader, I have grown companies, I have even started companies”.

Lead to engage: As a business owner, you’re not just managing products and services – you lead people too. So, seek out ways to benchmark your leadership skills up to the highest standards. You simply can’t afford to leave the wrong impression about your leadership with your employees.

 

3. Your leadership impacts customer loyalty

Can the reputation of just one person really affect the trust of customers? When one employee of United Airlines damaged their reputation by violently removing a passenger, the airline’s stock price lost $1.4 billion – investors simply lost trust. If that is true for the actions of one employee, all the more so for the actions of a business owner – regardless of business size.

While financial results matter for all businesses, there’s a lot more value in keeping loyal customers. It’s no secret that it costs more to acquire new customers. So, your trustworthiness as a leader and business owner is key.

Kemp observed how important it is to be a trusted leader. “We come back to the notion of ‘good people, doing good things’ and for the right reasons. Sometimes that gets lost in our pursuit for commercial gain,” said Kemp. But he adds, “It is important to raise the standard of leadership around the notion of ethics and values in decision making.”

Earn others’ trust: Once again Kemp looked toward an accreditation that displayed his commitment to sound leadership practice. Don’t keep your customers guessing. Show your trustworthiness by gaining the right leadership accreditation.

 

Great leadership helps your business to grow

Leaders with strong reputations carry their teams towards success, outshine the competition and reap financial rewards. If you want your reputation to be that of a leader who gets results, then you need to equip yourself with the accreditation that confirms it.

The Chartered Manager accreditation is the highest status that can be achieved as a manager and leader. It is awarded on experience, expertise and a commitment to management and leadership. The three-step application process involves just 12 hours and can be completed at your own pace – essential if you’re a time-poor business owner.

By becoming a Chartered Manager – like Travis Kemp – you’ll ensure your leadership drives the success of your business. In fact, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in the UK, found that Chartered Managers:

  • Help businesses grow: One in three Chartered Managers have used their status as a competitive advantage, citing it in tenders to win new clients
  • Deliver engaging leadership: 62% of Chartered Managers said their designation improved their people management skills
  • Build client loyalty: Two out of five Chartered Managers maintained business turnover

 

Drive business success by accrediting your leadership – become a Chartered Manager.

To find out more or to apply, visit managersandleaders.com.au/chartered-manager.

How does organisational culture shape your brand

Brands are much more than a name or symbol of a product. Leadership and people-management specialist and author, Karen Gately, believes that in a highly competitive world with the pressure on many organisations to lift their game intensifying, leaders are wise to define brand more broadly as the reputation that underpins consumer confidence and inspires buying decisions.

So how does organisational culture fit into this definition? Gately defines culture as the way things are done within an organisation. However, she cautions against believing that organisational cultures exist in a vacuum. “It’s entirely possible for an organisation to be confronted with behaviours from within their ranks, that are not reflective of culture. Once off, exceptions to the rule while problematic are not reason alone to ring the culture alarm bell.”

Gately knows that there are many examples of organisations who have failed spectacularly in maintaining trust in their brand because of a profit-centric culture. “Findings of the banking royal commission provides endless examples of a lack of integrity and poor behaviour,” she says.

“It’s evident the issues exposed were far from isolated incidents of poor decision making or selfish actions on the part of random individuals. In many instances, these behaviours were instructed, encouraged and rewarded by the organisations they worked for.”

As we’ve seen post-royal commission, distrust damages brands.

So how can leaders shape a culture that makes a positive influence on your brand? Gately lists three ways:

 

Set clear expectations around employee behaviours

Creating a powerful brand through people starts with being clear about what is expected and needed.  Leaders are wise to invest in ensuring every person on the team understands what successful behaviours look like. In other words, ensure a clear line of sight between how people go about their jobs and the influence that has on brand reputation.

 

Understand the touch points between your business and customers

Build understanding of the touch points between your customers and business, and the opportunities people have to influence trust and loyalty. Create awareness of the ways in which behaviour influences not only what people think, but also their subconscious reactions to your brand in the future.  Reflect on for yourself on when you have held an opinion about an organisations brand but have struggled to identify exactly why you feel the way you do.  Sometimes people don’t even bother to work out the answer. They simply move on to a brand they feel better about.

 

Get your hiring process right

Creating a great culture is unquestionably influenced by the quality of hiring practices. Getting it right from the start requires a disciplined and uncompromising approach to selecting people who are aligned with the organisation’s values. From there what matters most is that people are held accountable for the standard of behaviour they bring, and influence they have on your organisations brand.  Reward and recognise brand ambassadors and take decisive steps to address the attitudes and behaviours of those who are not.

 


Karen Gately, founder of Corporate Dojo, is a leadership and people-management specialist.  Karen works with leaders and HR teams to drive business results through the talent and energy of people. She is the author of The People Manager’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Getting the Best From People (Wiley) and The Corporate Dojo: Driving Extraordinary Results Through Spirited People.

Thinking bigger for business development

By Adrienne McLean MIML

Thinking bigger about what your business offers to customers can propel the business into areas of growth never imaged. It also keeps the business relevant, agile and in step with changing market forces locally and internationally.

But if something isn’t broken you don’t fix it, right? Sticking to the same way may seem reproducible and efficient, but is it limiting your business? While being able to offer a service or product well is of course good business, remaining stagnant in the way you do things means business efficiency could suffer. If you think of a wheel, it fundamentally hasn’t changed but its features have adapted to suit the needs of today’s modern vehicles.

It’s worth asking if there are new markets your business can go into. Or could you offer new products to your current market?

The business development process may simply involve implementing a culture of continuous improvement or it may require you to look for the next big growth step. Whichever stage the business is in, these five steps are important for thinking bigger about the business and focusing on what the business is offering customers and prospects.

1. Innovate

Coming up with new approaches and better delivery of the service/product to the customer are the driving forces for innovation and growth. Awareness of what is happening in the industry and the market is also essential. If you don’t keep track of these, beware – other companies certainly do and they can overtake you.

Thinking bigger about your business offerings drives innovation. Wanting to be the best, wanting to offer a brilliant service, wanting to reach more clients than ever thought possible – all these mindsets will help drive the innovation your business needs for business development.

2. Plan

Boldness and aiming high will get the business out of its comfort zone and propel it forward. However, change and improvement require more than just new ideas and aspirations – you must support it with a plan. Set goals against implementation timeframes. Whether these are long- or short-term periods will all depend on the size of the change and what you are trying to achieve.

Set down a pathway for growth that involves everyone in the business – from management to staff. Inform everyone of their involvement in the change to ensure a smooth process.

3. Set goals

This is about setting your focus and involves the following steps:

  • Set SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Timebound
  • Keep goals easy to see as reminders
  • Check in daily and weekly to track whether you’re on target
  • Celebrate when tasks are completed, and goals are achieved
  • Reset to goals that will stretch you and the business further

4. Collaborate

Constantly search for strategic partners who can help you in the pursuit of your aspirations. You may (or may not) currently do business with them but always keep an eye out for those who can help you get where you want to go.

Building collaborations will also help with secure referral partners and affiliate marketing – therefore growing your connections and the opportunities to get your message out there.

5. Measure

Measurement is pivotal as it keeps the business honest. Select metrics that are relevant to your goals and what you are trying to achieve.

You can measure several metrics including:

  • Financial: Measure the impact on the profit and loss or cash flow statements
  • Sales and marketing: Track the number of leads in pipeline, website views or sales calls against acquisitions
  • People and teams: Set metrics to measure not only what your people are achieving but also if they remain motivated

Thinking bigger is a mindset of growth and development about your business offering. It’s the way to build the business and achieve your aspirations. Focusing actively in on innovation, planning, setting goals, collaborations and measurement will propel business development on a successful pathway.

Do an audit on your business and check where you are at with each of these five steps. This will highlight steps for the business to think bigger and look at growth strategies.


Adrienne McLean is the founder and principal marketing and speaking coach for The Speaker’s Practice – which runs workshops, coaching and events that help professionals to improve their marketing and communications.

IML ANZ Members in Sydney are invited to join Adrienne at the Professional Services Marketing Conference on August 17th, 2019. This information conference takes delegates on the business development journey starting with marketing and digital marketing, going through to sales topics with mindset topics covered throughout the day. IML ANZ Members who book by July 17th enjoy a 15% discount when they use the code IMLEB. To book or find out more, visit www.professional-services-marketing-conference.com.

Harmony at Heart

By Lisa Calautti

 

Preventing heart disease and improving the heart health and quality of life of all Australians is at the core of the National Heart Foundation ACT’s mission. For its CEO Tony Stubbs, a vital element in ensuring this quest is a success depends on a united team of staff focused on this mission.

 

PEOPLE AND PROCESS

Stubbs, who has been at the helm of the foundation for a decade, manages a mixed team of 12 staff, comprising of part-time and full-time employees, as well as some volunteers and contractors. Respect for each team member is crucial to ensuring everyone works as a team, he says. “Regardless of whether they are a volunteer or a leader of a major project, it’s about listening to them and also empowering and supporting them,” Stubbs explains. “But generally giving people your respect and giving them the opportunity to grow and develop and do the best they can in the particular role they’ve been given is vital.”

That doesn’t mean that achieving team nirvana is easy for Stubbs. Quite simply, he explains it all comes back to process. It is remembering the foundation’s mission, key strategy areas and work plans so people can see how their role fits into the broader picture. Once this is set in motion, bringing all team members together to deliver a strategy is possible. “Once that’s at play, then people get on board and actually start to deliver in their programs as they are clear what they need to achieve,” he says. Once a collaborative effort is put in place, a sense of unity ensues, and a sense of accomplishment is achieved, he explains.

 

GUIDING MISSION

Keeping the foundation’s mission of reducing the impact of cardiovascular disease in the community at the fore of employees across all departments from finance, to marketing to health is vital. “Importantly, it’s about saying to them, ‘What are you doing to ensure you are working towards the mission?’” Stubbs says. “It’s also them being aware of the key strategies and what they are doing to link to the mission and support them to develop their work plans that are linked to these, so they can see what they are actually doing that ultimately goes towards achieving the mission but also the impact it has on individuals in the community.”

For Stubbs, good teamwork comes back to staff understanding how they fit into a ‘bigger team’. “Teams fall apart when there is a lack of clarity around what they are trying to achieve,” he believes. “It’s having that clear process around roles and responsibilities.” Regular performance reviews, staff meetings of all employees and frequent internal communications help foster and maintain a united workforce, Stubbs believes.

 

ONE NEW HEART

Educating the public about heart disease, its warning signs and the services available to those living with a heart condition, has helped inform the organisation’s new One Heart Strategy. “We all work in very different areas,” Stubbs notes. “For example, marketing and health program areas are different parts of the business that do different bits. But, if you allow them to go ahead and do their work alone, they’ll end up doing it solo.”

The key to achieving the strategy is ensuring all teams are working collaboratively together to develop the best possible product and be clear who is leading each process, Stubbs says.

 

PERSONAL CONNECTION

On a personal level, the values of the foundation strongly align with Stubbs. His aunt died of a heart attack on the doorstep of her GP’s practice and the effect her death had on his family was something that had a lasting impact. “She didn’t know the warning signs of a heart attack or that heart disease was an issue for women,” Stubbs says.

While the foundation’s work can be seasonal, with National Heart Week in April and May being a particularly busy period, 2019 has a steady program of events, where Stubbs concedes staff will be quite busy with little breaks between campaigns.

Major campaigns this year will include a ‘warning signs’ campaign and another targeted at people aged 45-plus to educate them about the importance of getting a heart risk assessment with their GP.

The impact the foundation’s programs has on the community, and the feel-good factor of helping others is a shared passion among the foundation’s team, says Stubbs. “In most jobs unfortunately, people get caught up in the day-to-day operations and forget what is at the heart of their work,”

Stubbs says. “For us, it’s really getting back to what are the key things we want to do to achieve our mission.”

Regularly reviewing projects and campaigns and seeing data on how many members of the wider public have benefited, in addition to hearing about specific case studies, is a rewarding aspect for all of the team. “We focus on impact not output, and it’s more about what impact our projects are having on the community,” Stubbs notes.

Four ways to protect your company from insider attacks

By Elizabeth Ticehurst

 

Security is a huge company expense. Guards patrol buildings, virus protection software is installed, laptops encrypted and mobile phones tracked. Yet a hard truth can be forgotten – employees may pose the greatest risk for companies. Protecting intellectual property and confidential information requires safeguards from misuse and theft by the very people who need to access these to complete their work.

 

A VERY REAL RISK

A recent case highlights the extent of damage insiders can inflict. It concerned two senior employees who worked for Lifeplan, a provider of investment products including funeral bonds and pre-paid funeral plans. The employees accessed confidential business and financial documents and used them to prepare a business concept plan, which they presented to Foresters, a direct competitor. They then copied a confidential database containing hundreds of funeral directors’ contact details, contracts, marketing and administration documents, and began approaching funeral directors to solicit business for Foresters while still employed by Lifeplan.

After the two joined Foresters, their funeral products business increased gross income by more than $22 million in two years. In the same period, Lifeplan’s business took a severe downturn and experienced losses of more than $20 million. Lifeplan took legal action against the two employees as well as Foresters, claiming they had breached their fiduciary duties as senior employees, and that they had breached Corporations Law provisions prohibiting the misuse of confidential information. Foresters was alleged to have “knowingly assisted” in those breaches. The case was appealed all the way to the High Court, which ordered that Foresters must pay the total value of its funeral products business (then worth more than $14 million) to Lifeplan.

 

KEEP YOUR BUSINESS SAFE

This case is not an isolated example. Clearly, an absence of oversight and a clear opportunity can prove a temptation too great to ignore for some employees. What then, can an employer do to protect themselves?

  • Written agreements. The first step, from a legal point of view, is to ensure that employees have signed a formal written employment contract with contractual obligations to protect confidential information. Surprisingly, it is not unusual even today to find senior employees who have no written employment contract! Small businesses or family-run companies often rely on a verbal agreement or a single sheet of paper to set out the terms of an employment contract. It is important to remember that while a properly prepared contract seems expensive, it can save a lot of money and legal difficulties in the long term.
  • Strong policies. Next, implement policies to control the primary ways confidential information is accessed and used. In most organisations, information is held electronically and employees access information through the company’s intranet, email and telecommunications systems. It is important therefore, to have a company devices policy covering IT and telecommunications systems and to provide compliance training. For example, the policy can state that certain information must not be downloaded on mobile storage devices such as flash drives. Policies should also alert employees that the company has the right to view all of their activity using company devices and systems.
  • Electronic monitoring. From a practical point of view, some degree of electronic monitoring will be required to enforce the company’s policy. For some organisations, such as banks, continuous monitoring is required, while other companies with limited resources will only need this periodically. Best practice is to direct monitoring to the times of greatest risk, such as when an employee is under notice and will shortly leave the company. Suspicious activity such as printing abnormally large volumes of documents, downloading information onto flash drives, or emails from a work account to a private one, should also trigger employee monitoring.
  • Legal action. Finally, even if the damage is discovered after the employee has left, all is not lost. Legal action can be taken to recover or stop a former employee from using confidential information, or to stop their new employer from taking advantage of it. However, as with most legal problems, prevention is better than cure.

Elizabeth Ticehurst is Special Counsel – Employment at KPMG

Digital innovation primer: Part four – AI and robots are here

By Craig Baty FIML

 

In this fourth of five articles on digital transformation for non-technical leaders, we’ll look at AI and robots. In last week’s article we saw how pervasive the Internet of Things has become, now let’s look at how AI and robots impact today’s workplace and world.

 

A higher intelligence?

 

Artificial Intelligence is the application of computing power to problems previously solvable only by human thought, if at all. It comes in many forms. Key technologies and applications include:

 

  • Advanced analytics: the proliferation of Big Data has led to the creation of massive data sets that can be effectively analysed only with AI tools. AI can spot complex patterns in the data visible to humans. AI’s usefulness as an analytics tool is especially relevant in the use of predictive analytics and decision automation.
  • Natural language processing (NLP) and speech recognition. NLP involves the interaction between computers and unstructured speech and text. The technology involves massive processing power and complex algorithms and is used in such applications as speech recognition and machine translation.
  • Cognitive processing: Otherwise known as semantic computing, refers to digital processing that attempts to mimic the operation of the human brain. It is especially suited to the analysis of large unstructured datasets and has been shown to be more effective than humans in the diagnosis of many diseases.
  • Robotic process automation (RPA): RPA has grown out of Business Process Automation (BPA), and refers to the use of AI techniques to automate workflow and business processes. A good example is the use of NLP to scan incoming emails and undertake the appropriate action, such as generating an invoice or flagging a complaint.
  • Machine learning: The use of AI techniques to help computers make decisions based on previous events. Like many AI techniques, machine learning involves a combination of raw computing power and logic-based models to simulate the human learning process.
  • Chatbots and virtual assistants: Chatbots are robotic processes that simulate human conversation. They are often used for automated online help functions. The technology is also used for so-called ‘virtual assistants’, which uses AI to interact with humans to provide information that helps them undertake specific tasks.

 

Brain and body: AI and robots

 

AI is software, while robotics is hardware. Robots are machines, usually but not always driven by AI-based software. Their first widespread use was in production line manufacturing, where they could be programmed to perform repetitive tasks. As AI becomes more sophisticated and robotics technology evolves, robots are increasingly performing more complex functions, from domestic tasks to education and training to mimicking human performance and behaviour.

Any application that involves AI being applied to the physical world is essentially robotics. This includes autonomous vehicle and aerial and seaborne drones. These also cross into the Internet of Things (IoT). It is common that these evolving applications typically draw on a range of technologies.

Although we are many many decades away from AI being able to completely replicate human decision making and behaviour (and opinion is divided as to whether this will ever happen), AI is not going away and will increasingly permeate all aspects of daily life. To remain ahead of the curve, leaders need to understand the potential for using AI to augment their capabilities and should begin the process by working with their teams to identify potential applications, then develop these ideas into proofs-of-concept (POC).

 

Digital transformation – why you should care

 

Join us in Sydney where Craig will present an informative and insightful TEL Talk: Digital Transformation – Why should I care? This brief primer on Digital Transformation will address:

 

  • What is Digital Transformation and why is it important for today’s leader?
  • What are the key technologies and processes to be aware of?
  • How have these technologies been used to create truly transformative business outcomes?
  • As a leader, how can you prepare yourself for an increasingly digitalised future?

Craig Baty is Principal and Founder of Technology & Management Services (TMS), which specialises in research-based data-driven thought leadership and consulting for ICT strategy, outsourcing, vendor management, go-to-market execution, and market and competitive intelligence. TMS also consults on cross-cultural communications and managing virtual teams across multiple geographies. He previously held C-level leadership roles with global telecommunications provider BT (British Telecom), Japanese ICT & technology giant Fujitsu and ICT research and advisory firm Gartner. Craig currently serves as NSW Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and on the NSW Council of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Digital innovation primer: Part three – The Internet of Things (IoT)

By Craig Baty FIML

 

In this third of five articles on digital transformation for non-technical managers, we’ll look at the Internet of Things. After introducing workplace innovation in last week’s blog, we look at how the Internet has become all-encompassing, enabled the internet of things (IOT) and become even more vital for all leaders to understand and leverage.

 

From Internet to Internet of Things (IoT)

 

The Internet was first developed as a way of connecting computers to each other. With the rapid growth of digital technology almost anything can now be connected to the Internet – hence the term ‘the Internet of Things’ (IoT).

 

There is a multiplicity of ‘things’ that can be connected to the Internet. It is not only devices. By definition, anything with an IP (Internet Protocol) address can be connected. Wireless technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth and 4G and 5G telephony mean that devices and sensors do not need to be physically connected – indeed, with IoT, remote connectivity is the norm.

 

The key to IoT is the ‘embedding’ of Internet connectivity into virtually any kind of physical device, which means they can be controlled and monitored over the Internet. They can also act as monitors – or sensors – for other devices and applications. This opens almost infinite possibilities and expands the scope of the Internet and what it can be used for.

 

Putting the IoT to work

 

The IoT can be best understood using examples in different environments, as introduced in this non-exhaustive list of IOT applications:

  • Medical and health: IoT is the key technology for e-health, enabling remote diagnostics and monitoring, inside hospitals and in the community. Monitoring patients’ clinical condition and behaviour is a key aspect of effective healthcare.
  • Buildings and dwellings: The so-called ‘smart home’ is a primary example of IoT technology. Virtually all domestic appliances can be IoT enabled, allowing them to be remotely controlled or activated according to external conditions. At the commercial level, building management systems do the same thing on an industrial scale.
  • Energy and environment: The so-called ‘smart grid’ uses IoT technology to monitor and control the efficient distribution of energy. Smart sensors can be used to monitor all aspects of the environment and are increasingly being used for such applications as earthquake and tsunami prediction, warning and mitigation and wind-farm optimisation.
  • Transport: A high-profile application of IoT technology to transportation is the rise of the Autonomous Vehicle (AV), otherwise known as driverless cars. More important than the technology and the vehicle itself are the monitoring and control mechanisms that enable it to move safely and efficiently around the transport network. IoT technology is also important and controls transportation systems such as trains and aircraft.
  • Manufacturing: Automation has long been part of the manufacturing process. The IoT takes this to a new level, enabling vastly improved process automation, much of it based on big data and the sophisticated analysis of it. Digital twinning using IoT enables factory management to effectively replicate their factory on-screen or use virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) to monitor, manage and maximise factory floor operations from a remote location.
  • Agriculture: The IoT has made possible such applications as driverless tractors and automated irrigation systems. However, its primary application of agriculture is in monitoring the environment to enable the right decisions to be made about the most efficient farming practices.
  • Smart cities: The term means different things to different people, but what they all have in common is the widespread deployment of IoT enabled applications including traffic and parking management, public space lighting, infrastructure monitoring, disaster recovery facilitation, and the like.

 

IoT has now moved beyond its earlier limited industrial applications and now permeates most aspects of society. As IoT can be embedded in almost anything, people are becoming very inventive. However just because your front door mat, your toothbrush and your mower could all be connected, it doesn’t mean that they should be. Leaders need to resist the desire of their employees and management to connect absolutely everything, and work with their teams to develop ideas for IoT use that can enhance corporate operations, improve safety, and create a competitive advantage.

 

In next week’s blog we will introduce Artificial Intelligence, robots and their impact.

 

Digital transformation – why you should care

 

Join us in Sydney where Craig will present an informative and insightful TEL Talk: Digital Transformation – Why should I care? This brief primer on Digital Transformation will address:

  • What is Digital Transformation and why is it important for today’s leader?
  • What are the key technologies and processes to be aware of?
  • How have these technologies been used to create truly transformative business outcomes?
  • As a leader, how can you prepare yourself for an increasingly digitalised future?

Craig Baty is Principal and Founder of Technology & Management Services (TMS), which specialises in research-based data-driven thought leadership and consulting for ICT strategy, outsourcing, vendor management, go-to-market execution, and market and competitive intelligence. TMS also consults on cross-cultural communications and managing virtual teams across multiple geographies. He previously held C-level leadership roles with global telecommunications provider BT (British Telecom), Japanese ICT & technology giant Fujitsu and ICT research and advisory firm Gartner. Craig currently serves as NSW Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and on the NSW Council of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Digital innovation primer: Part two – Workplace innovation

By Craig Baty FIML

 

In this second of five articles about digital transformation for non-technical leaders, we’ll look at workplace innovation. After learning what digital transformation is in last week’s blog, what should leaders understand about how technology shapes the modern workplace?

 

Defining today’s workplace    

 

Digital technology has transformed the workplace, as it has so much else. The very concept of the workplace has evolved. For an increasing number of people, it is no longer a physical location. Rather, it describes the wider virtual environment enabled by such technology as smartphones, mobile broadband, virtual and augmented reality, collaboration tools and a range of other workplace productivity technologies.

 

It is now more than 40 years since digital technology transformed the back offices of large organisations. It is just over 30 years since the PC revolution swept through the front office and brought personal productivity tools such as word processors and spreadsheets to all information workers. Twenty years ago the Internet became a common business tool and the Apple iPhone ushered in the smart phone revolution around 10 years ago.

 

Each of these waves of technology transformed the workplace. We are now experiencing another revolution, driven by new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the cloud-based delivery of personal and workplace productivity tools.

 

Technological backbone of the modern workplace

 

There are many names for the rapidly changing use of technology and related enabling policies at work including Workplace Innovation, Workstyle Innovation, Smart Workplace and others. Many technologies work together to make it happen. These include:

  • Collaboration tools: software that helps individuals in the workplace to work together on projects by sharing applications and data. Collaboration is not a new idea, but Cloud and artificial intelligence have enabled new ways of working together. At the same time, existing personal productivity tools such as Microsoft Office migrated to the Cloud and brought a new dimension to collaboration.
  • Social media: this is a consumer technology increasingly being used for workplace productivity. Sophisticated analysis tools, many of them driven by AI techniques, are leveraging social networks as important business tools.
  • Workflow and content management: another existing workplace application that has been revolutionised by new technology.
  • Mobility: smartphones, mobile broadband and mobile apps have enabled individuals to work anytime and anywhere.
  • Unified communications: the bringing together of different media – voice, data, image, video – into one integrated corporate communication system.

 

Not everybody is an information worker. New technologies are also transforming workplaces in areas as diverse as manufacturing, transport, energy, utilities and mining. Many of these applications, such as virtual and augmented reality, use a combination of technologies based on AI, the Internet of Things and other innovations. Individuals, the workplace, and the enterprise have never been more connected. Leaders should continue to work with their HR/HCM teams to identify any blockages to productivity and employee satisfaction, safety and engagement and with their ICT teams to co-create appropriate policies and procure the technology to enable them.

 

In next week’s blog, we will cover the Internet of Things (IoT).

 

Digital transformation – why you should care

 

Join us in Sydney where Craig will present an informative and insightful TEL Talk: Digital Transformation – Why should I care? This brief primer on Digital Transformation will address:

  • What is Digital Transformation and why is it important for today’s leader?
  • What are the key technologies and processes to be aware of?
  • How have these technologies been used to create truly transformative business outcomes?
  • As a leader, how can you prepare yourself for an increasingly digitalised future?

Craig Baty is Principal and Founder of Technology & Management Services (TMS), which specialises in research-based data-driven thought leadership and consulting for ICT strategy, outsourcing, vendor management, go-to-market execution, and market and competitive intelligence. TMS also consults on cross-cultural communications and managing virtual teams across multiple geographies. He previously held C-level leadership roles with global telecommunications provider BT (British Telecom), Japanese ICT & technology giant Fujitsu and ICT research and advisory firm Gartner. Craig currently serves as NSW Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and on the NSW Council of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Digital innovation primer: Part one – Digital transformation (DX)

By Craig Baty FIML

 

In this first of five articles, we’ll look at digital transformation (DX) in general and introduce the key technologies and concepts to be aware of. DX is important for non-technical leaders to have some level of understanding about, so as to effectively manage and use it to their advantage.

 

What is digital transformation?

Digital technology, in all its forms, is transforming business and society. Virtually every area of human activity is being profoundly altered. The most successful people and organisations are those embracing this transformation to build new products and services based on innovative business models enabled by the many technologies that comprise the trend.

The famous Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, regarded as the father of the study of innovation, described it as ‘creative destruction’. That is what is happening now, all around us. The old ways of doing things are being destroyed. In their stead are rising new ideas, new techniques and whole new industries. In our increasingly digital economy that process is called Digital Transformation (DX).

 

What’s driving this revolution?

There are many enabling technologies driving this revolution. Foremost amongst them is the Internet, which has allowed levels of communication, connectivity and information sharing unimaginable a few short years ago. It has given rise to the Cloud, to the Internet of Things (IOT), and to new ways of delivering and sharing software and services. In a few short decades, it has grown from a limited low bandwidth network connecting just a few computers to a universal high-speed matrix covering the whole planet.

Another key driver is the range of technologies known collectively as Artificial Intelligence (AI), which are enabling new ways of working, new ways of analysing data, and new ways of using existing technology. Massive advances in computing power have made possible AI technologies like machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) and predictive data analytics. These techniques enable us to make sense of the vast amounts of information (often called ‘Big Data’) generated by the new technologies of the era of Digital Transformation.

 

Digital transformation impacts all aspects of leadership

Massive changes are happening all around us. In the workplace, mobile technologies increasingly mean that for the first time in history we are location independent. We are connected any time and anywhere. Smart phones have transformed many people’s lives and have been the most quickly adopted technology in human history. They have also enabled many new applications and new ways of working, driving a whole range of initiatives and technologies, often referred to as Workplace Innovation, to improve employee productivity and engagement.

At the enterprise level, corporate data and corporate applications have also become untethered from the physical world. Large scale corporate wide applications (Enterprise Applications/Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)), services and even infrastructure are now delivered by the Internet. The separation of the digital world from the physical world is blurring, with robotics transforming manufacturing, drones being used for an increasing number of applications and autonomous vehicles becoming a reality.

Governments at every level are delivering their services digitally and are opening government data to third parties to help them develop new information-based services. Electronic identity management has become commonplace.

These changes are revolutionary. But they are not without cost. New technologies mean new opportunities, bad as well as good. In a totally connected world, Cybersecurity has become a major issue. It encompasses a range of technologies designed to protect computers and networks from unwelcome intrusion and to ensure their continued reliability.

Digital Transformation is sweeping the world. Its effects are significant, at every level of business and society. Leaders in all spheres of human endeavour will be impacted and need to become aware of the essential concepts and implications to maximise opportunities for innovation and managing in this rapidly evolving environment.

In the rest of this five-part blog series, we will cover each of the key DX technologies introduced above. Next week we will introduce Workplace Innovation and related technologies.

 

Digital transformation – why you should care

Join us in Sydney where Craig will present an informative and insightful TEL Talk: Digital Transformation – Why should I care? This brief primer on Digital Transformation will address:

  • What is Digital Transformation and why is it important for today’s leader?
  • What are the key technologies and processes to be aware of?
  • How have these technologies been used to create truly transformative business outcomes?
  • As a leader, how can you prepare yourself for an increasingly digitalised future?

Craig Baty is Principal and Founder of Technology & Management Services (TMS), which specialises in research-based data-driven thought leadership and consulting for ICT strategy, outsourcing, vendor management, go-to-market execution, and market and competitive intelligence. TMS also consults on cross-cultural communications and managing virtual teams across multiple geographies. He previously held C-level leadership roles with global telecommunications provider BT (British Telecom), Japanese ICT & technology giant Fujitsu and ICT research and advisory firm Gartner. Craig currently serves as NSW Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and on the NSW Council of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).