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Tech or a human revolution… which do we really need?

For starters, let me clarify where I stand. I’m not a technophobe, nor tech challenged, nor a late adopter, nor even a luddite. In fact I love digital technology and all the benefits it distributes in its goodie bags. But I’m also a diehard realist and pragmatist to boot, who doesn’t get carried away by the views of popular tech authors on big data, artificial intelligence and automation. I’m not overtly enamoured by the transformative power of tech, or the belief that it can be the cure for all human challenges.

Amongst the last things we all want is another tech revolution that promises more than it can deliver, create more problems than it can resolve, or ignore the external cost to society of an obsession with economic growth at all cost.

There are humongous problems that tech cannot and did not resolve. Like preventing the Covid-19 pandemic and its ripple effects, which frontline medical responders, the medical profession, good old common sense and human empathy are still helping resolve. This brings me back to the question raised by the title of this piece. It actually starts by going one step further. Before humans even begin to resolve tech problems, humans need to resolve a very human problem, viz. the need for perspicacious leaders at the social, business and governmental levels.

It was John Maxwell who said, ‘Everything rises and falls on leadership. In fact the word ‘leader’ itself calls for a redefinition, simply because it is today used interchangeably with ‘manager.’ This burdens managers with leadership challenges they were never trained to take on. Let’s now examine the phenomena of perspicacious leadership and what it entails. Over the many decades of my career, I’ve longed to experience the elation of hearing these words from a business or industry head: “We just have too many leaders in our organisation.” I’m still waiting.

Leadership is influence… nothing more, nothing less. And nothing helps an organisation more than people who have what I call the leadership DNA. This means that the greatest task a leader has, is developing other leaders. And this is hard. It means genuinely rethinking a tonne of stuff, risking failure. Listening to different points of view… yes, listening, not hearing. Watching out for unconscious bias when it comes to dismissing people because they don’t look, think or speak like you. At the point of sounding repetitive, it’s very hard work.

In my experience, in order to develop leaders you must practice seeing things through the eyes of those you lead, while at the same time, fine-tuning your own perspectives to understand your people better. In practicing the perspective mindset, I found the people I interacted with struggle with many barriers to develop their true potential. Barriers to security, hope, being understood and inclusion. That’s what I tried working through with them. Now, where is Technology in all this? Or am I missing something here!

Another practice in training the perspective mindset, is allowing people to freely share what’s on their mind, without fear or pressure to perform or impress. This also frees me to respond without bias and curate the value each brought to the table. One of the signs that the leadership DNA you’ve tried to develop is bearing fruit, is when the people you’re engaging with are able to see things through each other’s eyes and experience a sense of community and begin working towards making their mark, leaving a legacy and altering their personal and organisational destinies. Again, where is Technology here?

More than a tech revolution, what we truly need is a leadership potential revolution. The world has yet to see what leaders can do, who’ve fully realised their innate potential. If we can pull this off, the reward is a planet beyond anything we’ve thought of, dreamed or imagined! Let me ask you once again – what does the world need today? Tech or Human Revolution? Comments welcome…

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