A number of years ago, I was asked to present the topic of Digital to a senior executive committee. The guidance I was given was that I had 15 minutes, that was it.
Digital is a very broad topic as one can talk about many of its subtopics for hours. I could have used my 15 minutes giving the committee an overview of what digital is, what digital projects I was working on at the time, or what the future may look like. In the end, I decided to have the focus of my presentation be on a request I needed from them.
I started off with a bit of education and context setting. I explained that Digital is part of one’s strategy, marketing plans, operational efficiencies projects, client and employee connection, data and much more. I then gave some examples of ‘startup’ digital initiatives that had been successful in large enterprise organizations. I explained the many reasons why these initiatives were successful, as well as explaining the importance of accepting failure to gain learning through a number of inspirational quotes. Then came my request, the one action I needed from them that I was not able to do myself.
Before my presentation, I sent the group an article by Ken Perlman, an engagement leader at Kotter International, titled The Disastrous Effects of a ‘Mostly Aligned’ Executive Team. As Digital becomes embedded in aspects of our work life, our interactions with clients, our ways of working and our learning, it is challenging to come to an agreement across a global enterprise organization to move in a certain direction. My request was for them to spend time working on getting into alignment with certain Digital topics because if they did not, then the thousands of employees that work for them would be going off in multiple directions, creating inefficiencies across the organizations, with employees and clients.
The disastrous effects of being mostly aligned, whether it is with an executive team, a team you lead or are part of, and even just between two people, is costly, a time waste, can create unnecessary assumptions and builds bridges that do not connect. The time you spend in getting in sync, will be time well spent in the long run.
thought for the week 