Abstract and Sample Chapter for Leadership in Disruptive Times: Negotiating the New Balance (2023 Special Edition)

?????????? ?????? ???????? "???????????????????? ???? ???????????????????? ??????????: ?????????????????????? ?????? ?????? ??????????????" (???????????????? ???????????? ??????????, ????????)

* Terms apply. The prices exclude the nominal delivery charges via courier. The estimated costs of delivery via courier are available upon request. For details of the terms for the corporate discounts and email us at [email protected] or online at https://www.disruptiveleadership.institute/contact/ .?

Details on the books are available at www.disruptiveleadership.institute/books . For inquiries on the purchase of books and applicable corporate discounts, email us at [email protected] or WhatsApp at +65 9002 3848 or +65 9455 9437.

???????????????? ???? ?????? ????????

* Terms Applies.?The prices exclude the nominal delivery charges via courier. The estimated costs of delivery via courier are available upon request. For details of the terms for the corporate discounts and email us at?[email protected] ?or via online at?https://www.disruptiveleadership.institute/contact/ .?

Details on the books are available at?www.disruptiveleadership.institute/books . For inquiries on the purchase of books and applicable corporate discounts, email us at [email protected] or WhatsApp at +65 9002 3848 or +65 9455 9437.

???????????????? ???? ?????? ????????

The world is facing significant disruption and increasingly urgent global challenges affecting individuals, families, organizations, governments, and society. This VUCA -driven (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) era of disruption and crisis brings new complexities, opportunities, as well as risks for businesses (Bawany 2023 ). The potential for crises has intensified, driven by rapid technological change, and amplified by societal expectations linked to environmental (net-zero emissions), and social and governance (ESG) phenomena that would impact the World of Work (WOW).

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve seen an acceleration of these trends. We have seen how some businesses have been successful in looking beyond the pandemic and into recovery, while others have failed and many perished, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

As the world becomes more complex and connected, the threat of a corporate crisis grows. There are instances everywhere: we have experienced first-hand how when a pandemic spreads worldwide, it caused massive global business disruption and a public health disaster; a corruption scandal causes a corporate leader to step down; the sudden death of a CEO without succession planning in place; a data breach shakes customer confidence; quality issues trigger a widespread product recall. These are just a few examples among many of the recent corporate crises (Bawany 2020 ).

?Today’s businesses face unprecedented challenges operating in a global environment that is highly disruptive and increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Disruption has significantly impacted the way the world works, as many of us have experienced today and in recent years. Apart from businesses, government, and individuals are also responding to shifts that would have seemed unimaginable even a few years ago. The current wave of disruption, including the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the known forces of Industry 4.0 (such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics), globalization, geo-political tensions, and demographic change, is reinventing the workforce. Internet technologies have enabled drones and driverless cars, which are transforming supply chains, logistics, health care, and even defense and security, such as the war against terrorism (Bawany 2020 ).

Organizations face challenges that present varying levels of severity. But handled poorly, even a seemingly minor shock has the potential to escalate into a crisis that threatens the viability of a business. A crisis and disruptive event can disrupt operations, damage reputations, destroy shareholder value, and trigger other threats.

As the business community has learned through the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever for leaders to anticipate and plan for the possibility of an unplanned disruptive event. The more prepared you are to manage shocks, the less likely you’ll fall victim to the serious harm a crisis has the potential to inflict.

Whereas risk management is traditionally a proactive discipline, crisis management is reactive. Crisis management can be viewed as a specialized discipline within risk management, where specific practices are instituted in response to unexpected events that threaten a company’s stability. Having an effective plan and resources in place mitigates the destructive nature of that reactivity.

Crisis management is one of several interrelated core disciplines comprising enterprise risk management, along with emergency preparedness, disaster response, business continuity planning, supply chain risk mitigation, and cyber liability prevention. Crisis management practices can help lessen the magnitude of emergencies and disasters while decreasing the uncertainty and anxiety associated with these events.

We face a new era of radical uncertainty and disruption brought about by other challenges such as climate change, financial crises, terrorism, Brexit, demographic changes in the labor market, health/disease risk, mass migration and rapid developments in digital technology and its impact on transformation at the workplace. The management of shocks and crises is becoming an everyday occurrence. Organizations also need to be agile, and leverage opportunities and drive innovation to remain competitive in the face of challenging conditions.

The right leadership is critical for organizations to thrive in a disruptive business environment. The book aims to answer the following questions:

1.?????What are the future major disruptive forces that organizations need to take into consideration in their crisis management and business sustainability plan?

2.??????How do organizations balance risk management and agility (speed) with business sustainability?

3.??????How do leaders transform their organizations to be agile, adaptive and innovation-driven in the era of constant disruption and crisis?

4.??????What are the key considerations for an organization to consider as they adopt digital transformation to reinvent people, processes, and technology in the VUCA-drive, highly disruptive World-of-Work (WOW)?

?????????? ???? ???????????????? ?????????????????? ???????????????? ?????????????? ???? ?????? ???????????????????? ???? ???? ???????????????? ????????

“???????????????????? ?????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????? ???? ?????? ???????? ???????????? & ????????????????????: ?????????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ??????????”??

???????????? ??????????????

???????? ?????????? ?? “??.??.??.??.??.??.” ??????????????

The level of disruption that leaders are facing in recent years is unprecedented. The complexity and scale of the disruptive challenges they are navigating have left many leaders feeling overwhelmed. However, recent research by the Disruptive Leadership Institute (DLI) has unveiled that not all leaders are struggling (Disruptive Leadership Institute 2022). Some do thrive in times of crisis and chaos. These leaders who are thriving are not doing so by chance. They are proactively demonstrating specific leadership practices and skills resulting in success for their respective teams and organizations, framed as the "C.R.I.S.I.S." Model which will be further elaborated on later.

The global research involving interviews with 529 c-suite executives (CEOs and their direct reports) around the world (North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and APAC (Asia-Pacific) have identified the top disruptive global trends that senior leaders anticipate affecting their organizations and also the specific plans implemented to address the crises resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and the technological revolution & innovative disruptive technologies impact at the workplace.

A crisis also tends to bring a high degree of chaos and confusion into an organization. Typically, there is a lack of information precisely when virtually everyone in the organization has a huge emotional need for it. Those involved need to know and understand what happened, why it happened, and how it will impact their futures. Ambiguity is especially potent.

Leadership

It has been argued that the term ‘leadership’ is ambiguous due to its origins in the common vocabulary (Yukl, 2006, Janda, 1960). The earliest written evidence of this originates from Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to 2300 BC. Most character-based languages have unique symbols for “leader” and “leadership” and do not spell them out. According to one Egyptian scholar, the Pharaoh possessed the quality of a perceptive heart and was endowed with a speech that was characterized by authority and justice (Lichtheim, 1973). Similar qualities were enounced by Sun Tzu in 512 BC, who wrote that a leader stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness (Tzu, 2005).

Attempts to produce a single unifying definition have repeatedly fallen short of acceptance. Leadership authors like to quote Stogdill who said, “there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept,” but this just states the obvious. The efforts of writers on the ingredients of effective leadership have produced conclusions about what leaders do that are often confusing and even conflicting (Bass and Stogdill, 1990). In this climate of disagreement, several descriptions of what makes for effective leadership have gained more favor than others. Among the more widely accepted factors are traits, behavior, information processing, relationships, and follower perceptions (Kets de Vries, 2004).

From this author's perspective, leadership can be defined as:

?“The ability of an individual to envision the future and impact and influence the followers towards achieving it by giving purpose (meaningful direction) to the collective effort and embodying values, and creating the organizational climate where the purpose can be accomplished"

Influence is the ability to persuade, convince, motivate, inspire, and judiciously use power to affect others positively. Generally speaking, it’s not the kind of authority that comes from leveraging title, position, or regulations. But exactly how is this different from other methods of leadership that managers carry out every single day? After all, the ability to influence others is an important part of leadership in good circumstances as well as bad. The power of influence would seem to be a useful leadership skill no matter what the managerial style of the individual leader where some managers are more participative and coaching than others and some are more coercive or autocratic and pacesetting, for example, in the way they approach their work.

The difference lies not in the importance of influence as a leadership capacity but rather in the particular context of the crisis itself, an emotional cauldron (a situation characterized by instability and strong emotions) that distills the components of influence into a potent concentrate of empathy, caring and empathetic listening and communication. Crisis leadership is a special case in which these specific tools of influence perform a critical role. In a crisis, timelines are more critical. There isn’t much time for reflection. Rapid decision making and a higher call to action become the norm.

Crisis

The problem with the term ‘crisis; is that it is used in different ways by different professions. In a general sense, the term implies an undesirable and unexpected situation that possesses latent harm to people, organizations, or society and could be viewed as an abnormal event (Almond et al., 1973).

Although crises typically engender a sense of urgency, countless chronic crises pose long-term risks which are not urgent in that they do not pose an immediate danger. Climate change, for one, dismisses this definition.

?The Harvard Business School definition states that a crisis is:

?“a change – either sudden or evolving – that results in an urgent problem that must be addressed immediately” (Luecke and Barton, 2004).

The word itself originates from the Greek krisis, which means “to sift or separate” (Klann, 2003). A crisis has the potential to divide an organization’s past from its future, to replace security with insecurity, and to separate effective leaders from ineffective ones. A crisis also has the potential to swap routine for creativity and to shift an organization from “business as usual” into significant change.

Like leadership, this term has ancient roots and was well understood. The Chinese defined it in the way they wrote it. Many crisis authors have spoken of how the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters (危机wēi jī) – one meaning ‘danger’ and the other ‘opportunity’. But it has been convincingly argued that the meaning of wēi jī may not be construed from a strict dictionary interpretation due to the complex nature of interpreting different combinations of Chinese characters (Mair, 2007). Although simple Chinese dictionaries show that the word jī has only a couple of meanings, it can acquire hundreds of meanings when it is used in combination with other characters. Thus, the only possible interpretation of wēi jī is ‘danger’ + ‘incipient moment/crucial point’. In other words, wēi jī refers to a potentially dangerous situation when something begins or changes.

Despite the failure to associate the word ‘opportunity’ with wēi jī, the fact remains that crises can produce remarkably positive outcomes. It has been said that virtually every crisis contains the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure and that crises contain an element of duality (Drennan and McConnell, 2007). The basic physics concept that every force has an equal and opposing force appears to apply here since some people always manage to benefit from the sufferings of others. Potential opportunities that can arise from a crisis extend far beyond the simple dictionary definition of opportunity (Drennan and McConnell, 2007) and demonstrate that failure to consider this aspect of crises is not advisable. It is thus telling and disappointing that the crisis gurus quoted above have elected to focus solely on danger and have failed to include opportunity in their definitions.

Effective crisis leadership can rescue an organization from chaos and deliver opportunities where before there were only disadvantages. Organizations that successfully handle crises can come out of them stronger and with greater employee, customer, and community loyalty than existed before the crisis. Leaders must look deep into the crisis for such opportunities that not only benefit the organization but also raise the potential for individual achievement among the organization’s employees. In their search, they should look to human elements—the emotions, the behaviors, and the reactions that affect and are affected by the crisis and can influence its outcome.

From this author's perspective, a crisis can be defined as:

?"A damaging event or series of events that are generally characterized by a profound change with a high degree of instability and carries the potential for extreme impact on the organization's sustainability and continuity. It’s significant because the damage that can be caused can be physical, financial, or reputational in its scope, and as a consequence, it will be decisive in determining the future of the organization."

Crisis Leadership

Leading in a crisis can be challenging. Managers who have led in such circumstances describe the experience as highly developmental—a benchmark in their professional careers. But what does effective leadership during a crisis look like?

There may be as many descriptions of leadership and crisis leadership however this author would define crisis leadership as:

?"The ability of an individual to recognize uncertain situations or potentially damaging events or series of events that possess latent risks and opportunities to ensure organization preparedness and make and implement critical decisions through influencing followers resulting in successfully eliminating or reducing the threats or negative impact of the said situation or event.”

?????????????????? ???????????????????? ?????????????????? ???? ???????????? ????????????????

A crisis creates a series of conditions that test the limits of teams and organizations, often forcing leaders to reexamine their core values. The word “crisis” broadly describes a low-probability event that has a high potential for serious consequences. Crises are time-sensitive, and as the clock ticks, the window to achieve a successful outcome close. To make matters more challenging, the unexpected and often unprecedented nature of a crisis means that reliable information to assist decision-making is scarce.

Leaders must grapple with uncertainty surrounding the cause and the solution to the crisis. Considered together, these elements create a tumultuous storm through which leaders must navigate.

To lead effectively during a crisis, it is beneficial to examine how a crisis impacts team dynamics. Given the high degree of uncertainty surrounding a crisis, leaders may feel that they are losing control. Therefore, some may reflexively overcompensate for this loss and attempt to control as many facets of the team as possible. However, this overreliance on centralizing decisions and tasks, instead of delegating, can produce massive inefficiencies in crisis response. Simply put, micromanaging may restore the leader’s sense of control at the expense of the team’s efficiency, which delays the implementation of effective strategies.

Leaders may also be tempted to switch to a survival mode. In this scenario, all energy and focus are directed toward minimizing the immediate threat, protecting reputation, and cutting costs. Although this leadership mentality can be necessary for the short-term response to a crisis, it may marginalize the emotional needs of the team and the public, who are experiencing panic, isolation, anxiety, and helplessness. In addition, a persistent survival mentality can undermine the team’s sense of purpose and long-term mission.

Effective crisis leadership boils down to responding to the human needs, emotions, and behaviors caused by the crisis. Effective leaders respond to those emotional needs as those needs are perceived by those experiencing the crisis, not just to their perception of what those emotional needs are, might be, or should be. The crisis will affect employee morale, attitudes, productivity, ability to focus, stress levels, relationships, and more. People are more apt to follow a leader who is reassuring and who can meet their primary needs—those needs they least want to give up.

The military’s single peacetime focus is preparing for combat, the ultimate crisis because it involves life and death. A major element of the military’s training teaches soldiers how to deal with the range of emotions they will experience before, during, and after combat (Klann, 2003). These emotions generally include horror, apprehension, grief, rage, revenge, loneliness, sadness, repulsion, vigilance, anguish, and guilt. Military leaders know these emotions will be experienced and must be controlled or the soldiers will not be able to function on the battlefield. Combat leaders must learn to deal with their own emotions as well as with the emotions of the soldiers under their charge. This is the same challenge civilian leaders face during a crisis, and they can expect the same kinds of emotional chaos to flow over the people in their organization and themselves.

Modern crises unfold in front of a worldwide audience because of the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and increased access to media. Therefore, today’s leaders must not only contend with the crisis itself but also navigate scrutiny in real time; minute-to-minute updates can make or break public trust. This intense spotlight might tempt leaders to avoid blame and escape accountability for a crisis. These self-interested tendencies can foster an “every man for himself” mentality that sows mistrust among team members. Consequently, the leader’s communication style and degree of consistency shape the team’s morale and guide public perception of the leader’s response.

Crisis researchers recognize that leaders who routinely deliver honest and empathetic communication are most effective during a crisis. Although it is challenging to remain transparent about bad news and setbacks as a crisis develops, the payoff is that the team and the public perceive the leader as authentic. Thus, it is necessary that leaders avoid downplaying credible threats and overpromising positive outcomes that they know to be unrealistic. In addition, displays of genuine empathy for those affected by the crisis reflect self-awareness and acknowledgment of peripheral stakeholders not just their immediate organization.

Figure 1 offers a summary of the contemporary research-based leadership practices framed as the "C.R.I.S.I.S. Model" that is linked with successful crisis response (Disruptive Leadership Institute 2022). Each skill, trait, and perspective are useful tools for leading during a crisis. But they are even more effective when integrated into a single crisis leadership strategy. Consider how the following skills, traits, and perspectives might add to a leader’s ability to get results through others even during times of crisis.

?Figure 1: The "C.R.I.S.I.S." Leadership Model

The “C.R.I.S.I.S.” Leadership Model

C OMMUNICATE:??

Particularly during a crisis, the ability to genuinely and effectively empathize with the people affected can make all the difference regarding whether a leader will succeed or fail. Never before have leaders been under such intense scrutiny from their stakeholders aimed at assessing whether they demonstrate the care, authenticity, purpose, and values that organizations profess to subscribe to.

The research by the Disruptive Leadership Institute has found that inspiring and transformational leaders during times of crisis tend to seek out and act on the counsel or advice of others. They also have a team of advisors that can offer as many perspectives as possible on their situation be it organizational or leadership challenges.

The best practices adopted by these leaders include asking themselves the following questions:

“Do I have access to diverse voices and sources of information?”: They adopt scenario planning to determine whose knowledge or expertise they might need in various kinds of crises and identify whether their organization currently has access to it.

“Do I routinely consider other team members’ ideas or feedback when making decisions?”: They sought out expertise to fill their blind spots and make informed decisions. Effective crisis leaders are those who know when—and how—to defer to others.

“What systems or processes might I put into place to surface and capture others’ perspectives?”: They look at how communication is structured within their organization and whether there are barriers or silos that they need to proactively address.

?R ESILIENCE:

?During times of crisis, leaders need to be calm and sustain their energy levels under pressure, to cope with and adapt to disruptive changes. They bounce back from setbacks. They also overcome major difficulties without engaging in dysfunctional behavior or harming others. Resilient leaders are genuinely, sincerely empathetic, walking Compassionately in the shoes of employees, customers, and their broader ecosystems.

The well-being and resilience of self and others are more important now than ever before. Role modeling around well-being will be important for leadership success as well as the need for clear messaging on psychological first aid, well-being, and mental health from the business.

I NTELLIGENCE:

In times of crisis, business intelligence is an area that leaders can leverage successfully when revenues are decreasing and budget problems come into play. By leveraging business intelligence and big data analytics, leaders will be able to discover things that are not obvious or that they didn’t know, such as the root cause of those revenue drops and how they affect specific levers within their organization.

S HIFT MENTAL MODEL:

In a crisis, leaders are compelled to try to implement measures that they have never attempted before. When a leader adopts a growth mindset in a crisis, the path to change tends to be less arduous as individuals with a growth mindset believe their talents and abilities are developed through self-development and practice. They are open to new ideas and learning and see failures as opportunities.

I NSPIRING:

During crises, leaders need to demonstrate inspirational and transformational leadership styles. Trust is more valuable than ever during times of crisis because it not only promotes resilience in the face of uncertainty but also provides solid ground for action and results in better financial performance. When leaders and organizations are centered on an authentic purpose, employees feel that their work has meaning. Research shows that employees who feel a greater sense of connection are far more likely to ride out volatility and be available to help companies recover and grow when stability returns.

S ET THE GROWTH PATH:

One of the biggest questions employees have asked their leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic is when this coronavirus madness will end so that they can get back to normal or business as usual. The reality is that it is going to be business as unusual. To prepare for the “new normal” or the “next normal,” leaders need to answer the question “what can I do now to prepare for when things return to a new normal?” To achieve this, they need to reflect on what has happened and what lessons they have learned and then plan to start with a new vision.

They need to connect the conversation about why they and the leadership team are embarking on preparing the organization for the future, what the outcomes are likely to be, and how to go about it. Leaders need to stay firmly grounded in questions like “what’s our goal here? What does success look like for us?” Leaders need to build a culture of accountability, foresight, a “people-first ahead of process and technology” mantra, and decisive adaptability. For many organizations, this means asking their workforce to work from home. If you are preparing for increased remote work, ensure that the organization has in place the right technology and the technical capacity to support it, including bandwidth, VPN infrastructure, authentication, access control mechanisms, and cybersecurity tools that can support peak traffic demands. Many leaders have confessed that their organizations were not ready for this!

Conclusion:

Ideally, all of us would balance our intellectual, physical, spiritual, and emotional lives all of the time. But that’s a difficult job, particularly when a crisis creates an imbalance and tips the scale toward the emotional end. This creates a special challenge for managers who must provide leadership to those who are in a state of emotional turmoil.

Occupying a designated leadership position isn’t the same thing as being a leader, doesn’t provide leadership on its own, and doesn’t prove that the person in that position has the skills or knowledge to be an effective leader. There is a significant difference between being a successful leader because specific numbers were achieved and being an effective leader. After all, the numbers were achieved and the continuing support of direct reports is evident. Leaders who view themselves as successful because of position, salary, or longevity, but leave a high body count of former employees bobbing in their wake, are often surprised to find their careers derailed or sidelined. Nothing separates such leaders from their illusions as quickly and sharply as a crisis because it’s then they realize they haven’t built the skills necessary to lead effectively during such traumatic events.

An organization’s senior leadership is key before, during, and after a crisis, and its quality can determine the length, severity, and ultimate consequences of the crisis. Leaders set the tone by their example and conduct during the crisis. By paying attention to the components of influence (especially communication, empathy, and caring), leaders can have a significant positive impact on the very human, emotionally charged climate that accompanies a crisis. That in turn can reduce the negative impact and duration of a crisis for the benefit of the organization.

Effective leaders often have a well-developed ability to influence others and can avoid using authoritarian or fearful tactics to get results. This is an especially important capability in a crisis when strong leadership is essential and getting results through others using threats, pressure, and coercion is generally unproductive and can even be harmful. Influencing techniques that are effective during normal times become even more critical during a crisis. Because influencing skills are applicable during normal business situations as well as in a crisis, leaders can develop these skills before the heat of a crisis is upon them.

If your day-to-day leadership doesn’t bolster trust, garner respect, inspire confidence, and connect emotionally with your direct reports, it’s highly improbable that your leadership will dramatically change just because a crisis is at hand.

?????????????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????????????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ?????? ?????????????? (??????????) ?????? ????????????????????????????

?????? "??.??.??.??.??.??." ?????????????????? ?????? ???????????????? ??????????????????????

As it turned out, COVID-19 was less a?‘Black Swan ‘ (catastrophic but highly improbable) (Taleb 2007) than a?‘Gray Rhino ‘?(Wucker 2016) a big grey beast lumbering along the horizon and then suddenly charging ahead as a high-likelihood, high-impact event. The COVID-19 crisis proved to us all that resilience alone was not enough to survive disruption. Firms also needed to be able to adapt to the uncertainty of the ‘new normal’ – they needed to be agile.

Building organizational agility into ‘business-as-usual’ has been a challenge for decades and organizations are often impeded by the leaders’ and managers’ lack of disruptive mental agility and suite of disruptive leadership competencies. Many of them have a misguided belief that agility and resilience cannot work together. On the contrary, our research has shown that the two can be complementary.

Today’s business environment demands organizations to adopt organizational learning as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. This means they need to learn to scale and deliver growth at clock speed while enabling agility and sustainability.

Enabling growth today in an era of constant disruptions and crises would require a deliberate focus on elasticity: building agility and sustainability into the design of the organization while ensuring that the business can meet strategic business objectives and goals. Companies need to adhere to evolving societal standards and operate using sustainable business practices to scale and drive growth. Opting in or opting out of sustainability is no longer an option. Sustainable organizations expand the term “performance” to optimize environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes as well as financial results. Since the relative emphasis on these outcomes' changes over time along with the methods for achieving them, there is no sustainability without agility. Indeed, the digital era has revealed the implications for the effective design and implementation of agile and sustainable organizations.

For future disruptions which would evolve into crises if they are not prepared. that place importance on resilience now, only to let become an afterthought later, will do so at their peril. COVID-19, with all its indirect impacts, is the most immediate critical event organizations face so far in this decade, but it is hardly the only one. There will be other potential forces that are creating new and constant waves of disruption — creating both opportunities and risks. These includes:

1.????New World Order (Globalization and Populism)

2. Geopolitical Power Shifts (Russia-Ukraine Conflict and South China Sea Disputes)

3.????Environmental Shifts (ESG, Climate Warming, and ‘Net Zero’ Emissions)

4.????Future Pandemics (H5N1 Highly Pathogenic?Avian Influenza?also known as ‘Bird Flu’),

5.????Demographic Shifts (Ageing Population and the rise of Generation Z/Digital Natives)

6.????Technological Shifts (Metaverse, 6G/7G, and Quantum Computing)

Companies experiencing fast growth must build an agile and sustained organization designed to rapidly deploy and redeploy talent and resources without denigrating operational capability in other areas. Capability building includes everything from training on how to run virtual meetings and executive coaching to workshops focused on teaching fundamentals around how to lead change. While companies face a significant opportunity to expand and realize revenue and profit growth, they may not always readily have the organizational capabilities to do so effectively. Why? For one, external disruptions to a given market (e.g., new regulations, innovations, customer performance requirements) can quickly make current business and/or operating models less viable. Organizational designs must be able to outpace disruptive changes of environmental jolts, economic shocks, and more classical reorganizations.

To evolve, organizations need to develop continuous change capabilities. For organizations seeking to scale and grow, not only should their leaders inspire change and be effective ‘change agents”, but they also need to adopt an integrative and future-focused approach to their strategic redesign, allowing them to integrate structure, people, process, and technology (PPT) as leverage points to drive growth. Engaging leaders at all levels and aligning their growth and disruptive mindsets and providing the relevant incentives to reinforce new behaviors go a long way toward executing large-scale organizational design efforts and growing the company.

Our research on best-in-class organizations that have successfully navigated the disruptive challenges?took concrete steps to dramatically improve their capacity to anticipate, respond to and capitalize on the disruptive forces heading their way. As a result, we have developed the?"L.E.A.DE.R." Framework? (see Figure 2) for organizations to prepare for the era of constant disruption and crises ahead that could threaten the organization's sustainability:

Figure 2: The "L.E.A.D.E.R." Framework for Managing Future Disruptions

L: Leverage organizational?learning?as a strategic advantage:

Organizational learning and management are at a transition point because of the shift in disruptive digital innovations. There is widespread recognition that investing in organizational learning drives change and innovation.?Today’s organizations are operating in an environment characterized by high uncertainty, risk, and turbulence, for example, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and major product defects, to name a few. These unanticipated crisis events, small- or large-scale, naturally occurring or human-induced, have a far-reaching and significant impact on organizations and individuals within.

Avoiding or reducing such impact requires not only effective crisis management practice but also significant learning effort from everyone in the organization. Meanwhile, as the environment grows in complexity, it is more apparent that the rate at which organizations learn may become the determining factor in their ability to survive or adapt. Within such a context, constant and continuous learning has become a necessity rather than an option for organizational survival, adaptability, competitiveness, and long-term viability.

E:?Embrace?experimentation and an innovation-driven organizational culture for preparedness:

Change is imperative. Yet many organizations' large-scale transformation initiatives meet with setbacks, delays, and even failure. Those that succeed are soon confronted with a painful truth: they are not leapfrogging. At best, transformation can put these organizations on par with their newer, more nimble competitors. As the pace of change continues to accelerate, organizations across various industries are seeking a way forward. Developing an innovative-driven organizational culture can help organizations to withstand disruption in the future, and it also offers important benefits today.

While all innovation requires creativity and action to deliver value, crisis-driven innovation demands creativity and action under pressure — and oftentimes constraint — in response to a disruptive event or trend. Understanding the psychology of crisis-driven innovation is an essential component of building a more resilient future and creating crisis-driven innovation principles. Successful organizations run through the crisis-driven innovation principles by applying the “think, do, apply” model, cycle testing different scenarios and ways of working as you explore new ideas and potential solutions. They keep learning and experimenting.

A: Foster organizational?agility?and speed:

Organizational agility requires a cadre of?'disruptive digital leaders '?that can anticipate business changes, stay flexible to adapt to shifts in the market and initiate change in their organizations. It's the dynamic organizations that have a much better chance of surviving – and even thriving – in the shifting business environment. Embracing new ways of working and making decisions can help firms avoid becoming mired in bureaucracy which can bring change to a screeching halt.

It seems obvious that when faced with a crisis, organizations should simply ramp up more speed and agility to seize an opportunity. But not all organizations do. Speed is not simply an attribute of an organizational activity tied to clock time. Rather, speed is a complex, performance-enhancing organizational capability that requires a holistic approach to its development and execution. Speed alone enables companies to operate quickly only in already established product domains. During a crisis, companies must also demonstrate agility, a capability that allows the organization to pivot to adjacent or entirely new product domains.

D: Decisiveness and rapid decision-making:

Agile organizations navigated the initial impact of a disruptive event and crisis better than most. One reason is that they delegate decision-making to frontline employees and to other critical roles where value and risk are concentrated. Yet, delegating does not mean leaving people on their own; rather, it is about coaching (not micromanaging) decision-makers to make successful decisions, providing guardrails, and empowering them to make final decisions.

Making decisions faster inevitably means mistakes will happen. However, organizations should adopt experimentation and give employees room to make those mistakes—as long as they don’t threaten the business. Our research revealed that best-in-class organizations take steps to build risk mitigation into their decision processes. This lets them continue to move with speed: moving forward with implementation and quick test-and-learn cycles that allow for nimble adjustments and open doors to opportunities.

E: Empathy and empathetic listening:

Empathy affects our ability to adapt and achieve results. It is the capacity to understand what someone else is experiencing. Leaders who practice empathy consider what people in the organization are experiencing through their frame of reference. When leaders are being profoundly impacted personally and professionally, it’s important to check in with people regularly. Asking someone how they’re doing takes on a whole new meaning and dimension during a time of massive disruption.

When you take a moment to connect with someone, you create the right experience for employees. During times of crisis, empathy is of great importance as our research has shown that leading companies that pivot from marketing to helping and from fulfilling customer desires to meeting customer needs have achieved great results. These socially conscious organizations across sectors and geographies are finding ways to get involved and support their customers and communities. By consciously providing empathy and care during this crisis, companies can build a foundation of goodwill and long-lasting emotional connections with the communities they serve.

R: Resilience in Navigating Disruptive Change:

During times of disruption, embedding resilience at the heart of the organization is crucial for building a foundation for growth, innovation, and pursuing new opportunities. Both leaders and employees at large need to be empowered to take positive action during a crisis and organizations can achieve this by equipping them with the right skills and competencies. By rehearsing different risk-type scenarios, crisis management or response teams can develop the ability to operate effectively even under the most challenging disruptive conditions.

At the same time to successfully navigate extreme uncertainty, effective crisis structures, plans, and processes must be developed to help absorb and recover from the impact of unprecedented or extraordinary events. By managing the response, owning the data, and making better decisions, the organization can move through a crisis and emerge stronger. As a result,?even in a worst-case scenario, you can navigate extreme disruption, protect your people, customers, and business, and build trust with your stakeholders, regulators, and wider society.

?Over the past 20 years, successive economic and geopolitical crises have quickly sent shockwaves throughout the world, affecting every country, economy, trading relationship, and business operation. Amid continuing uncertainty around how the war in Ukraine may end or escalate, business leaders are faced with the disruptive challenges of navigating in the dark, accelerating already urgent transformation plans, and building organizational resilience for impacts that may yet strike.

The disruptive events of the past often have had short-term business impacts as leaders seek to return to a state of normalcy. However, we are now in an era of cumulative and extreme disruption that should more sustainably change future decision-making. For example, some immediate consequences of the war in Ukraine could be medium- to long-term sanctions and countersanctions, commodity shortages, and supply chain disruption — so companies need to factor them in as part of their agenda.

The best-performing companies disrupt and reinvent themselves on a continual and ongoing basis. And this is also true of those who lead them. Today’s leaders must have the courage to break away from tried-and-true but rapidly fraying business models, even when it feels hard.

Conclusion

The recent COVID-19 pandemic with its devastating consequences has tested political and business leaders globally and has exposed deficits in crisis communication, leadership, preparedness, and flexibility. Extraordinary situations abound, with global supply chains suddenly failing, media communicating contradictory information, and politics playing an increasingly bigger role in shaping each country’s response to the crisis. The pandemic threatens not just our lives and livelihoods but also our economy and liberty as we have experienced during the lockdowns or travel restrictions.

It has also imposed at times ethical dilemmas and emotional stress on both the leaders and the employees at large. Nevertheless, the pandemic as well as other past crises including the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997; the 911 Terrorist Attacks, and Global Financial Crisis in 2008-2009, also provides an opportunity for organizations, leaders, and governments to learn from their mistakes and to place their businesses, countries, and institutions in a better position to face future challenges.

References

Almond, G. A., Flanagan, S. & Mundt, R. (Eds.) 1973. Crisis, choice, and change: historical studies of political development., Boston, Little Brown.

Bass, B. M. & Stogdill, R. M. 1990. Bass & Stogdill's handbook of leadership: theory, research, and managerial applications, New York, Free Press; Collier Macmillan.

Bawany, S. 2020. Leadership in Disruptive Times. Business Express Press (BEP) Inc. LLC, New York, NY.

Disruptive Leadership Institute 2022. Crisis Leadership Lessons Learned from the Front Lines: Navigating the Disruptive Leadership Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic & the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) at the Workplace. Disruptive Leadership Institute, Singapore. Available at https://www.disruptiveleadership.institute/research-reports/ . (Assessed 19 November 2022).

Drennan, L. & Mcconnell, A. 2007. Risk and Crisis Management in the Public Sector, Routledge.

Janda, K. F. 1960. Towards the explication of the concept of leadership in terms of the concept of power. Human Relations, 13, 345-363.

Kets de vries, M. F. 2004. Putting leaders on the couch. A conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. Interview by Diane L. Coutu. Harvard Business Review, 82, 64-71, 113.

Klann, G. 2003. Crisis Leadership: Using Military Lessons, Organizational Experiences, and the Power of Influence to Lessen the Impact of Chaos on the People You Lead, Center for Creative Leadership. Greensboro, NC.

Lichtheim, M. 1973. Ancient Egyptian literature: a book of readings. Vol.1. The Old and Middle Kingdoms. , London, Berkeley.

Mair, V. H. 2007. Danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray., Pinyin.info.

Tzu, S. 2005. The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Special Edition, El Paso Norte Press.

Wucker, W. 2016. The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore. St Martin’s Press

Yukl, G. A. 1989. Managerial Leadership: A Review of Theory and Research. Journal of Management 15, 251-289.

?????????????????????????? ?????????????????? ???????????????? ???? “???????????????????? ?????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????? ???? ?????? ???????? ???????????? & ????????????????????: ?????????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ??????????”??

* Terms Applies. The discounted prices exclude the nominal delivery charges via courier. The estimated costs of delivery via courier are available upon request.

The details on each of the books are available at https://www.disruptiveleadership.institute/books/ .

For enquiry on purchase of books contact AeU Student & Alumni Affairs (SAA) Office in Kuala Lumpur via email [email protected] or Phone: +60 3-5022 3456.

Date: 11th?November 2022 (Friday) Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm (MYT GMT +8)

Hybrid Session: LIVE in person and Live Stream: AeU Linkedln / Facebook / YouTube

Venue: AeU Knowledge Centre @ Wisma Subang Jaya, No.106, Jalan SS 15/4, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Website: https://aeu.edu.my/ Email: [email protected] Phone: +60 3-5022 3456

?COMPLIMENTARY REGISTRATION!!!

?REGISTER HERE! https://forms.gle/hosFGs4XueCxEi1i7

Opening remarks by: Professor Dato' Dr Ansary Ahmed , Founder President, Asia e University

Distinguished Speaker: Prof Sattar Bawany CMEC , CEO, Disruptive Leadership Institute & Adjunct Professor, School of Management, Asia e University

At the end of the 2-hour session, the participants will learn the following:

1)?????What are the future possible disruptors and crises that would impact businesses globally?

2)?????How to evolve your leadership skills to help mitigate business-related risk?

3)?????How can businesses prepare for future crises by adopting the “C.R.I.S.I.S.” Model and the “L.E.A.D.E.R.” Framework?

Thank you and looking forward to seeing you at the event.

Student & Alumni Affairs (SAA). School of Professional, Executive Education and Development (SPEED), Asia e University (AeU)

Website: https://aeu.edu.my/ Email: [email protected] Phone: +60 3-5022 3456

Address: Wisma Subang Jaya, No.106, Jalan SS 15/4, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

APPENDIX: ABOUT CEE AND DLI EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS