This is part 4 of a 6-part series.
Being able to lead amidst uncertainty is probably the single most important skill we can have today. I can’t remember a time within my own lifetime where there was more unpredictability facing us in every aspect of our lives. As leaders of organizations large and small, we feel the weight of making decisions every day that might affect our ability to thrive in the future.
The more we train ourselves to be agile, experimental and empathetic (as discussed in part 3), the more confident we will be in our ability to make good decisions even when we don’t have complete information about what the future holds.
This is a key leadership skill identified in the Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human Capital Trends: “Readying work and workers for uncertain futures depends on building the human element into everything an organization does.”
This skill is central to this entire series. In part 1, I introduced the idea that the events of 2020 revealed many long-standing issues that leaders in corporate America, healthcare and higher education – and society as a whole – have been too slow to address. These issues are rooted in one particular unfortunate truth: we’ve ignored and suppressed people’s individuality at every turn. Part 2 addressed the reality that transformation is happening whether you’re ready for it or not, while part 3 explored how we need to overhaul the way we lead, based on these new realities.
In this article I’ll extend the leadership conversation to address how we can plan for the future and create strategies when so much is unknown and unpredictable.
As with the previous articles in this series, this will feature a blend of written content and short videos of individuals from across industries (doctors, professors, executives, deans and more) sharing their own thoughts and expertise during the 2020 Leadership in the Age of Personalization Virtual Summit.
Get Out of Your Own Head (To Get Out of Your Own Way)
One way to plan for the unpredictable is to make sure you’re not relying only on your own perspective or experience. In this first video we get three examples of how to do that – by listening to your own employees, by “feeling the data” about people and not just analyzing it, and by taking an “outside-in” approach – paying attention to what’s happening outside your organization, in the lives of people.
Sharing these examples are: Kristin Gwinner, EVP and Chief HR Officer at Chico’s FAS, Inc.; Gustavo Canton, Analytics Leader at Starbucks; and Nik Modi, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets.
Examine Your Systems
Were your systems created during a time when you could more easily predict outcomes? Then your systems are outdated and irrelevant. In this next video, Dana Woods, CEO of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, warns against relying on systems that still act as though you’re solving for efficiency and profit margins rather than solving for patient and individual needs. She is speaking specifically about healthcare, but this advice applies to any organization – especially if you haven’t proactively examined what your go-to processes are actually designed to produce.
Jeff Pilof, SVP of Supply Chain for CVS Health, discusses what healthcare and higher education can learn from the evolution of retail from one location – an individual store or a shopping mall – to multiple channels where people can buy what they need any way they choose.
Teri Fontenot, Board Member and CEO Emeritus of Woman’s Hospital, reminds us that we have to push through the fear and we have to do that with imperfect or incomplete information.
Learn From Each Other
We purposely designed this year’s summit to bring together leaders across three seemingly separate sectors – healthcare, corporate America and higher education – because it’s never been more obvious how interconnected health, business and education are on our lives as individuals and on society as a whole.
For example, as mentioned in this next video by Shaden Marzouk, President of CareMore and Aspire at Anthem, one of biggest problems in healthcare is accessibility – making it more accessible and affordable to more people. Other industries have cracked this. So, when recruiting and hiring, stop relying on your traditional requirements for all of the expected experience and credentials for any particular role – those same experience and credentials that haven’t been able to solve this problem yet in healthcare. Expand your idea of who could solve this problem for you and of what kinds of skills you need on your team.
As mentioned in the video by Marzouk: “Healthcare needs people with skills in consumerism, engagement, technology that’s nimble and mobile, and also people who understand socioeconomic impact, understand communities.”
I would extend that message to include every industry – we all need people with skills that are perhaps not traditional to our industries. In fact, key themes in this next video include the potential for several types of cross-pollination: across generations in the workforce, across various industries and business sectors, and partnerships among businesses and universities.
In addition to Marzouk, the video includes insights from Dan Connolly, Professor of Management and former Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration at Drake University; and Sridhar Sundaram, Tiedemann-Cotton Dean and Professor of Finance at Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance, at the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida.
Once we’ve brought in those people with perspectives and experiences that differ from our own, the next challenge is making sure we give them room to actually put those unique perspectives and experiences to use. That’s when diversity becomes inclusion – and that’s what we’ll tackle next. Part 5 of the series will explore how to pursue and employ inclusion as a growth strategy going forward – and why inclusion requires leading with humanity and belonging.
To learn more about leading inclusion as a growth strategy, click here to read the series. To measure your readiness, click here.
Watch more videos from the Age of Personalization series.
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