By Professor Paul Griffith
From November 21 to 24, Professor Paul Griffith, the World’s first Professor in the area of Management to lead a team to launch a rocket into space, will leverage TEXEM’s proven and tested methodology to deliver TEXEM’s upcoming programme. Other TEXEM’s illustrious faculties that will join Professor Paul Griffith include Harvard’s Founding Director of Maximise your Board programme and World renowned Ambassador Charles Crawford and Gerald Baldwin, CEO of Cadbury World. In addition, during this programme, participants will include senior executives of different organisations attending TEXEM UK’s upcoming Strategic Leadership for success in volatile times programme at Jury’s Inn, Birmingham (The city that recently hosted the World to the Commonwealth Games), UK. London Business School alumnus, Professor Paul Griffith, shares insights into how organisations can deploy Strategic Leadership for Success.
In what ways could an organisation develop and innovate customer value propositions while still navigating in times of uncertainty?
When the business environment becomes more uncertain, this is an excellent opportunity for customer-led organisations to prosper. During uncertain times customers’ needs often change. By understanding these new requirements and developing the value propositions to help customers solve their problems, organisations can engender great loyalty with existing clients and attract new customers. It is also an opportunity to innovate to provide solutions to non-customers – where a different option suddenly becomes attractive to them.
Are there benefits in digital transformation for organisations who want enhanced business performance and profit after the COVID-19 era?
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements in a highly agile way. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation. The point of a digital transformation isn’t to become digital; it’s to generate VALUE for the organisation and your clients. Successful leaders show high curiosity and agility to look past their current business to reimagine where transformative value & growth is possible. So digital transformation is a driver for organisations to develop an enhanced customer-centric culture, more innovative processes and the ability to understand and respond quicker to a more volatile and uncertain business environment. This topic and others will be covered in more detail at Birmingham’s forthcoming TEXEM Strategic Leadership for Success in Volatile times programme.
What are the major challenges and obstacles that could inhibit digital performance in an organisation’s operations not sure of the future?
Organisations need to reimagine their business model in the 21st Century. They must combine efficiency with innovation effectively – often, organisations focus on the former – to become truly ‘ambidextrous’ organisations. Changing the ambition and culture of an organisation to embrace the digital World and adopt the new driving principles of innovation, customer centricity and agility in their culture and critical performance indicators are significant barriers to overcome. Nevertheless, leaders of organisations need to engage with this transformation, and as with all change, it is difficult to leave the World we are familiar with behind.
What strategies could you prescribe for organisational success when predictions of prosperity are not certain?
Strategy is about ‘choice’. In a more uncertain environment making these choices becomes harder; how does the strategy reflect a focus on core areas for investment and still place bets for new opportunities in an unclear and fast-changing commercial context? During the Covid pandemic, those organisations that focused on using their ‘purpose’ as the touchstone for their decision-making appear to have performed better – being clear on why they exist and the problem(s) they are solving for customers and setting these at the centre of their strategic choice making has served them well.
How does an organisation ensure digital transformation without staff rationalisation so as not to hurt performance noticeably?
There is a lot of debate about how the digital World of the 21st Century will change the skills required of employees. We can see that new skills are needed, and different roles in organisations appear as digital systems and processes become embedded in organisations. Those digitally transforming organisations are improving their performance – the most valuable and fastest-growing companies in the World demonstrate this. For these organisations, more staff are required with different skill sets, such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and different ways of working, for example, being more collaborative with greater accountability in flatter organisations. So the challenge for organisations is developing and training their existing staff in these new technologies and ways of working whilst attracting new talent with digital skill sets.
What are the possible strategies that would ensure digital transformation for an organisation to progress steadily without harming the gradual disposal of manual operations for optimal success?
Digital transformation will only increase in different sectors of the market. So the first strategic choice for an organisation is to reimagine its business model and commit to changing it to ensure that they are a successful player in the digital 21st Century. Conceptually, this is no different than we saw during the industrial revolution, as manual labour gave way to steam engines, which were replaced by electrification and then computerisation. There are of course, organisations that were unwilling or unable to make this transformation and they no longer exist. The leaders of the organisation need to define their vision of the organisation and put in place a plan to execute this.
Why should executives attend TEXEM UK’s forthcoming programme on Strategic Leadership for Optimised Organisational Performance in an Era of Uncertainty?
With a more uncertain environment, those organisations that perform best are distinguished by their leadership capability more than ever. Those leaders who can demonstrate clarity and purpose of their strategic choices, exemplify being customer-led and translate and communicate their strategy through the organisation are best placed to deal with the challenges of a volatile and complex world. By joining this impactful TEXEM programme, you will be exposed to the thinking and frameworks that drive the development of the 4000 executives that TEXEM has helped to develop their leadership capabilities in the past 12 years. Also, this programme will leverage TEXEM’s proven and tested methodology, which makes learning fun, impactful and engaging with support from leading practitioners who would make it easy for you to apply these ideas pragmatically and strategically in your organisation. For more information, please visit texem.co.uk or email exec@texem.co.uk
