SEA KAYAKING & A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

Like some of you, I am going through a digital transformation journey in information technology, which has been a bittersweet experience - very rewarding but definitely rocky at times. I love what we have been doing during our transformation at Monsanto, but boy, it’s quite a ride! I decided to take 4th of July week off for a quick break from the transformation (big thanks to Steve Mizell for that much needed Wednesday off – feel fortunate to be working for @Monsanto!!) Sigh!!

I visited Alaska for the first time, and it seemed like a lot of fun--until my troop decided to take a sea kayaking tour. The thought of it scared the hell out of me! None of us in my troop had ever went sea kayaking. We are family of four and we are doing sea kayaking!! To top it off, I barely know how to swim like an expert. (Yes, I know, I just admitted to all my readers)

So, picture this -- we are with our tour guide in the middle of an ocean with our kayaks. It’s the same place where the day before we took an all-day cruise and identified more than 20 humpback whales, black bears, dolphins and gazillions (exaggerated) sea lions and sea otters. I am looking at my kayak, which is quite long and very flat, and not at all confident that it will survive the waves. It’s a two-person kayak by the way! Our tour guide (a 20-year old man) comforted us that it will be totally fine and assured us that we will want to do it again once we do this (“Yes, sure,” says the skeptical little person sitting on my shoulder!).

Initially, the ocean was a bit wavy and bumpy, but as the weather changed, it got choppier. I was worried about the safety of my little kids (6 and 10 years old) in kayaks in the middle of the ocean. Four hours in the ocean seemed like a lifetime.

Our tour guide stayed with us throughout the four-hour journey. His main goals are to keep us together and keep us calm. He reiterated over and over that we absolutely need to work together to get to the other side. “You’ve got to be communicating with each other - this is your team. Keep collaborating and keep it altogether,” he said.

Our tour guide was exactly the leader our team needed – highly influential, had the ability to keep us calm through this wavy and choppy journey, the ability to keep the team together and to encourage us to paddle faster and faster to get to the other side. When the waves got choppier, we paddled even faster. And once we got to the other side, the scenery was unbelievably gorgeous! This journey was so worth it!!!

This is what a digital transformation journey now looks and feels like to me. When we get through this – all of the highs and lows etc -- Monsanto will be a company with a strong digital vision and digital leadership. Digital leadership qualities will be a key ingredient to a successful transformation. Leadership that exemplifies breaking down the silos and collaborating, believing in the vision and being able to influence at each level of the organization. We need this kind of leadership at every level of our organization.

After our kayaking, I noticed something about all the other tour guides by the ocean. They were mostly women (6 out of 7). This is not by accident! I asked my tour guide about this, and he said the type of qualities they look for in their tour guides are traits that are naturally strong among females – high influencing skills, ability to keep the team together, being calm & composed in the face of uncertainty, ability to navigate ambiguity though adventurous and risk taking at the same time. It made complete sense to me.

So, to all the leaders out there, it’s not the role that will define who you are, it’s the leadership qualities that you display during the unpredictable journey that will help us get where we need to go – a transformed digital industry leader in agriculture!

I just needed to go to Alaska to discover that.

@anju.osu