Leading for Exponential Organizations

Recently I participated in the ThinkX program sponsored by SAP Innovation Partnership Program and Singularity University. The origins of ThinkX touch the xPrize competitions and other design events which seek to leverage exponential learning. Over the past 5 years, SAP and SU have hosted over 800 SAP executives, leaders and employees to events around the world. In this third article of a three-part series I will explore the big trends, themes and take-aways - including how they may impact industry and society in the coming years.

In the age of Exponential Leadership (XL), organizations will need to look at not just who are the high performers but also the synergies across individual members of teams, cohorts and groups to create exponential performance. The nature of leadership will change – in some obvious and in some very subtle ways. Management will be of less valuable to organizations as new leadership models emerge. This is however only the beginning.

The classical consideration of style and focus of leaders equipped with broad vision and the ability to “look around corners” will be more important than ever. However just as important is the ability to put the right “team on the field” and ensure that each of the players is performing to the expectations of that role but also to those of the other players on the field. For instance, hiring the best performer for the role in a traditional sense allows that individual a greater chance of success. But it may not necessarily be the skills needed to grow, expand and improve the overall performance of the team. Taking the team sport analogy further, just because you draft a great receiver doesn’t mean the team wins if the line can’t block and the passer can’t throw accurately. The move from “hiring the best person for the job” to “hiring the best person for the team” is at the heart of this shift.

Additionally, humans will need to consider the impacts of technology on their team-based activities and interactions. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will address some near-term repetitive tasks, the larger more cognitive space of bio-robots may suggest that more sentient devices will play meaningful roles in teams and groups in the future – as early as the second half of this century. This will also have an impact on how we form teams, the needs and performance of those teams, and the relationships between team members in ways we have yet to fully imagine. Manufacturing companies are already embracing some of these early shifts in the war for talent, as Millennials tend to group perform versus individually perform – in addition to Digital Natives (those born after Millennials) who have great comfort interfacing and working with intelligent machines.

My colleagues Claudia Mandelli and Gina Nodar recently wrote about human - AI workplace impacts in Forbes article Meet the New Co-workers who Won't be Joining you for Happy Hour. Coming sooner to a workplace near you than perhaps you expected.

This is the third of a three-part story. Part One and Part Two are also available. This article is cross-posted on Medium and WordPress by the author.