What’s Your Digital Job Description?
?The digital age is changing all our lives, including every job description. Chances are, you’re working in an organization still mostly embedded in the industrial era, with a focus on internal efficiency, with individuals reporting to bosses, and with everyone operating within a hierarchy of authority.
That’s going to change as your organization inexorably shifts—whether it wants to or not—to a digital and agile way of doing things: an obsession with delivering more value to customers, with work being done in self-organizing teams, in a network of competence, rather than a hierarchy. In this new, digital world, every job description will be different.
Why is this change inexorable? It’s because digital is simply a better, faster, cheaper, more convenient way to get almost anything done. It has already changed almost every facet of how we live. And this is just the beginning. When digital firms master these new, more agile ways of creating value, they can move more quickly, operate more efficiently, mobilize more resources, attract more talent, and use it more effectively, win over customers more readily, and enjoy more elevated market capitalizations.
The CEO Job Description
The change in job description begins with the CEO. The industrial-era CEO is busy as an administrator of current business operations with “vast, encompassing functional agendas, business unit agendas, multiple organizational levels, and myriad external issues, along with?a wide array of constituencies—shareholders, customers, employees, the board, the media, government, community organizations, and more.
In the digital organization, the CEO job description is very different. It includes embodying the obsession with the customer, developing the road map for the future, creating new businesses, and creating multiple paths to ‘yes’.
The Job Descriptions Of Managers
The changes in job descriptions continue with managers. In the industrial era firm, a manager is typically part of the “frozen middle,” with a job description of a Dilbert-style controller, maintaining alignment with the top, reviewing and checking work, focusing on procedures ahead of substance, communicating what the boss wants; playing for time, often waiting to make a decision till it’s clear which way the managerial wind is blowing.
In the digital organization, the manager is an enabler of self-organizing teams to create value for customers, focusing on substance ahead of process, communicating what will create value for customers, doing what’s right at once, and removing impediments rather than creating them.
That’s just the beginning. Every other job description in the organization will also be different, whether you are in operations, finance, IT, HR, strategy, budget, marketing, legal, or whatever.
To learn more
Would you like to know more about how your life, your work, your organization, and your society are destined to be different in the digital age, and what choices you will have? And how can you prosper in this emerging new age?
If you’d like to learn more, here are three opportunities.
·???????Enroll in my FREE WEBINAR ‘Winning in The Age Of Digital’ (online this Wednesday August 25 from 11am to noon ET) Register here.
·???????If you'd like to listen to the world's top experts discuss these issues in depth, then join me at the WORLD AGILITY FORUM on September 25-26 (6 hours online) Speakers include Aaron Bjork (Microsoft), Curt Carlson (former CEO, SRI), Michael Lurie, Darrell Rigby, Vivek Wadhwa, Raymond Hofmann, Rita McGrath, Bill Fischer and Annika Steiber. Details here.
·???????Register yourself-and your team-in my EXECUTIVE TRAINING COURSE 'Winning in The Age Of Digital' on Oct 27, Nov 3 & 10. (12 hours, online)
领英推荐
This interactive course is for executives—individually or in teams—who want to enhance their understanding and leadership skills for the age of digital. The course will cover six key areas:
??????????????????Learning how to inspire others to change through leadership storytelling.
??????????????????Understanding the difference between industrial-era management and digital-age leadership.
??????????????????Mastering the three basic laws of the digital-era organization.
??????????????????Learning how to innovate by systematically creating new customer value.
??????????????????How to create new businesses, digital platforms, and business ecosystems.
??????????????????How to diagnose the status of your Agile initiatives and digital transformations.
Register here
Learn more here
·???????The participants at the April iteration of the executive training course were unanimous in recommending the course. "Inspiring!" "Mind blowing!" and "Life changing" were some of the adjectives used.
·???????Got a question about the course? For example, what's involved in enrolling your whole team, please send me an email. I'd be delighted to hear from you.
·???????I hope you will join me in these exciting events.
And read some of my recent Forbes articles:
·???????Why CEOs Need A Job Description