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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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From Military to Digital Leadership Styles
🔥 About 100 years back, business management schools borrowed their concepts of leadership/management in armed forces. The mindset of an officer in the armed forces is very different from the mindset needed in continuous, infinite competitive, ever changing business operations.
More so, in the present high-speed digital era with tech-savvy business teams, I think it is time to rethink the concepts and assumptions behind the traditional thinking of leadership with a digital (hybrid) business context.
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Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands
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Digital Leadership Styles That's an excellent, very thought provoking topic. What kind of digital leadership styles are you thinking of?
It makes me think primarily towards agile leadership and a coaching style by managers and leaders, but there could be more...
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Why do we Need a Leader in the High-speed Disruptive Knowledge-era? @Jaap de Jonge: As discussed between characters in the business novel - Game Changers by Saumya, if we can have self-driven cars why not a self-managed business organization? Let's start with this thought process.
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Maurice Hogarth
Consultant, United Kingdom
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The Leadership of Non-Leadership "Manager" partially derives from handling horses and the logistics of an army. Which is why much of the language of business has a flavour of war.
"At the end of the day the best lead are those who say "We did it ourselves." (Paraphrased from a part remembered quotation)
To partly answer your question I would like to refer you to a Dutch organisation. "Buurtzorg" is a pioneering Dutch healthcare organisation (estb 2006 by Jos de Blok) with a nurse-led model of holistic care, starting from the patient perspective, that is revolutionising community care. It is working to extend into the UK.
Buurtzorg employs 15,000 nurses and no (zero) managers. [?] Apparently the self-managed, 'no managers' structure enables it to reduce its costs by 67%. Ernst & Young have reported that if all care was provided in this way it would mean an overall saving of around 40% on the Dutch health care system.
The nurses work in self-managing teams of 10-12. They go into a neighbourhood, introduce themselves and establish working links with GPs, care homes and others providing health care and develop their own caseload.
The organisation has:
- Won the Best Employer title four times in the last five years,
- The highest client satisfaction response in the country,
- A staff absenteeism rate of 33% below the country's norm,
- A staff turnover ate of 50% below the country's norm,
- Reported as "the best workplace in the Netherlands.",
- The fastest patient healing record in the country (50% reduction in the hours of care).
I would suggest that they are not the only such organisation but that others have also followed this (apparently) zero-manager structure. How discipline is managed, recruitment, appraisal, etc. and other "management" activities is moot and up for discovery... But it is being attempted.
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Rethinking - Leadership, Teams and Organisations @Maurice Hogarth: Thank you for sharing the example of - the Dutch Buurtzorg organisation. I will explore and learn more. Thank you again.
Can the same approach be adopted (contextualised) in tech-savvy competitive business organisations? Why not?
English is not my first language so please forgive me for my expressions.
Leadership is "I". What is "WE" of leadership?
Everyone or almost everyone is capable of leading oneself or capable of self-management. Like the birds in flight "leading" by turn.
Almost everyone with a similar attitude, skill-sets, and knowledge-base as well as purpose. "We do it" (From your above - we did it ourselves). Why not?
Perhaps, it is time for some zero-based, assumptions-free thinking on the subject.
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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What Kind of 'leadership Style' Would be Appropriate for the Evolving Digital-era? I think we need to rephrase the statement - what kind of "leadership style" would be appropriate for the NOW evolving digital era? New situations require new thinking.
In the fast-changing and disruptive geopolitical environment as well as the "contentious" world of business with aware, informed, and connected tech-savvy business organization teams, is an "event-focused" "military-mindset" style relevant? Appropriate? Why?
Let's start from the start. NO past references. NO looking in the rear-view mirror. No assumptions. What is the present reality? Do we need leaders? Why? If we need leaders, what kind of leaders? When? Where?
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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What Kind of 'leadership Style' Would be Appropriate for the Evolving Digital-era? Sure in todays' world leaders, all levels need to be tech savvy and fast, but in my view 'leadership in business is leadership in business'.
I'd like to share this experience: my old consulting company was engaged by a European high profile multi-national to give leaders at all levels deep knowledge of proven leadership and it included the researched styles/behaviors which come from the McClelland/Goleman/Boyatzis research work. 99% of the companies' leaders readily accepted the work once it was explained. The outlier was a young leader - a through and through millennial who frequently created opportunities to proclaim that millennials were about to take over the world and anybody even a few years older should retire forthwith and be quiet, he had come close to dismissal twice for causing large teams of staff to walk off the job. He insisted that the McClelland/Goleman/Boyatzis research and models were wrong/ridiculous and they achieved nothing especially in terms of leadership and the new millennial leadership was taking over the world. I engaged him in an open discussion in one workshop and asked him to explain in detail how millennial leadership works/exactly what it looks look like on the job. He blustered a few illogical words and was then speechless. I made no comment for several minutes then asked him if he was finished. He moved away quickly and slinked back to his chair with no clapping and a few boos in the background. His same age contemporaries were all buying in totally to the explanations/discussions/examples re the McClelland/Goleman/Boyatzis research and models. I said (publicly to the young man) 'perhaps it's unfair to put you on the spot like that, I'll give you a 2 hour spot tomorrow afternoon to give a fully detailed presentation about millennial leadership'. He was absent the next day. Leadership is leadership.
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Sir, what in your View is the Job-profile of a LEADER in an End-to End Digital Business Process? I think we went off the track or topic.
The topic started with the discussion between characters in the business novel - Game Changers by Saumya, (Faculty - Singapore Management University) where one...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Sir, what in your View is the Job-profile of a LEADER in an End-to End Digital Business Process? @Trilok Sindhwani: Sorry but I'm not convinced. I do agree that much critical high value data is quickly available today and must be used in modern business to keep ahead of competitors and create com...
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Mark Churaman
Consultant, United Arab Emirates
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Management Style May Shift to Self Managed But... @Trilok Sindhwani: My thoughts are that whilst management style may have, is being shifted to self-managed as in Agile, there is still Leadership required.
So the management processes of the old days...
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Bandopant Raje
Business Consultant, India
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Leadership Style a Morally Based One If your leadership style is not morally based, people will neither accept it, nor will they follow your instructions in a competitive business.
For example, if you want your staff to be honest and si...
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Gehrig Wiles
Management Consultant, United States
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Leadership Styles Your epiphany is about 50 years too late. Leadership is about getting things done through others.
The right style is the one that works for the given situation....
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Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar
India
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Self-management Leadership Styles I am a strong proponent of realization of the potential by each and everyone. The only missing thing is the proper change management at tendencies level at different layers of human personality. Even ...
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Ekechi Festus
Management Consultant, Nigeria
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Why we Still Need a Leader in the High-speed Disruptive Knowledge Era @Trilok Sindhwani: Agreed that technology has brought speed, precision and total quality dimensions to service/product delivery. Technology also has the proven capacity to minimize human intervention ...
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Reggy-Charles Degen
Professor, Belgium
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Buurtzorg Compared to High Tech Companies @Trilok Sindhwani: I have done quite some research around Buurzorg and IT companies and there are unfortunately many challenges that it needs to address that Buurtzorg doesn't have. But the self manag...
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Why Such a Strong - Neophobia? Ostrich Mindset! The life-span of business organizations has already come down from about 70 years to 17 yrs? Who is responsible?
Faulty assumptions and teachings of business schools? Or, faulty business leadership s...
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Helen Strong
Business Consultant, South Africa
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Leadership is not Only Management Totally agree that hi-tech has changed the face of business. I even support the concept that everyday management can be achieved through AI. There is no doubt that data (big and specific) and applicat...
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syed ferhat anwar
Professor, Bangladesh
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Technology and Humans Technology is not made to replace humanity but to make life better and ensure wellbeing.
In 2017, leadership of a Japanese retirement home decided to bring in artificial intelligence to serve the sen...
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Rahul Mehta
Analyst, India
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Game Changers and the Changed Game @Trilok Sindhwani: The character in the corporate novel "Game Changers" by Saumya, provides some very insightful futuristic trends. I feel the business-game has changed. The business players need to c...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Military Experience? I was previously an 'on the ground' military officer, in a war zone. And I see clearly from this experience that in such circumstances a more direct style of leadership is strongly needed, but not in ...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Difference Between Operational Management and Leadership @Trilok. With all respect I suggest that you stop demanding that others must agree with your beliefs.
Yes digital is providing comprehensive data for for fast decisions (operational decisions); that ...
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Alexey Timoshek
Russian Federation
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Leaders to Stay, Regardless of the Era I might be old-fashioned, but I'm sure leaders will always exist. People are neither cars nor computers. They need to be supported and inspired from time to time, as the vast majority of us are natura...
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Tilak Dissanayake
Consultant, Sri Lanka
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From Military to Digital Leadership During a war you have to maximise on your meager resources, more so if the arena is large and the frontiers many. Hence it is not correct to argue that the mindset of a military Officer is different f...
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Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands
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Soldiers, Sergeants, Captains and Generals Perhaps now is a good moment to add in our discussion the approximate layers of organizations. For simplicity reasons I mention only 4 (there obviously are more):
- In a typical army we have Soldiers...
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juan reyes
Entrepreneur, Philippines
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Strategy with Military and Digital Contexts @Tilak Dissanayake: From a strategy perspective, one cannot differentiate military and digital leadership as if they are extreme ends. Why? Military operations define the context of a strategy. In war...
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Box-in by the Original-sin - the Military Leadership Thinking Trap Would our "business thinking" be different, if the founding "business-thinkers" and the founders of business schools had thought of business as a "game-of-chess" rather than a "military operation".
M...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Reply to 'Box-in by the Original-sin - the Military Leadership Thinking Trap' (Trilok Sindhwani) @Trilok Sindhwani: Running a military needs a certain type of leadership and discipline, gaining ground against enemies is strongly underlining the leadership (and management) approach.
Starting/oper...
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Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands
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Militairy is not About Killing at All @Trilok Sindhwani: In fact military leadership is not so different from leadership of companies. On top of that, military leadership is also not about killing. Both militairy and commercial leadership...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Reply to 'Game Changers and the Changed Game' (Rahul Mehta) @Rahul Mehta: I certainly agree that the decisions "which leaders make need to be fast and decisive in many industries", but that's always been true in many industries/many situations where there are ...
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Trilok Sindhwani
Consultant, India
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Leadership, Deception, War and the World of Digital Business @Jaap de Jonge: Sir, are we just trying to play the "game-of-words"? War or not "DECEPTION" is the core of Sun Tzu thinking. Is this how we should think of business-customer relationships? War is an e...
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Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands
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Let's Focus on Military versus Digital Leadership Styles This forum thread is not if war and business are the same. They obviously aren't (although there are important similarities - one of them being they have both changed due to the arrival of digital tec...
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Tilak Dissanayake
Consultant, Sri Lanka
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Style or Qualities of Present Era Leadership @Trilok Sindhwani: In today's fast-paced information packed world, a digitalized outlook and democratic approach is required.
As a retired military officer I was exposed to a long drawn war that tran...
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Maurice Hogarth
Consultant, United Kingdom
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Is a Leader Necessary for Leadership to Happen? Leadership is an aspect of management. It cannot be separated from it. Yes military leadership requires a 'follow me' approach, it also requires the management of the welfare and logistics of each sol...
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Dr. Alan Williams
Professor, Thailand
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Is a Leader Necessary for Leadership to Happen? @Maurice Hogarth: With respect, I repeat your very wise words:
"However, ALL of the factors that relate to the nature of what management-leadership is still apply, it is about achieving the required ...
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Rahul Mehta
Analyst, India
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Leadership in the Digital Era is a TEAM GAME @Gehrig Wiles: Perhaps we need other words for - "Being a Leader" and "Doing Leadership".
In the high-speed digital-team games, each player has unique skill-sets and knowledge-base. Leadership is NOT...
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Tilak Dissanayake
Consultant, Sri Lanka
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Military Strategy and Business Strategy is Different?! @Trilok Sindhwani: Sorry your perception of military is long out dated and war is the process of enforcing one states polity or their political will, originally, over another state but now expanded in...
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