Leadership for the digital workplace

Let’s start by taking a look at leadership for the digital workplace. First, leadership is not the same as management (which refers to the role in the organization’s structure), so you don’t have to be a manager in order to lead for the digital workplace. Instead it is about inspiring others and not being afraid to take action. In general for the digital workplace, there’s a lack of people who are willing to venture into the unknown and then guide the others to follow, like a pioneer. Surely, there’s a great deal of hurdles on the way, e.g. complexity and technical challenges, but with stamina, determination, courage and some more qualities it is possible to break through and reach a productive way to collaborate in the digital workplace. And surely, for pioneers it is good to have guides that know their challenges and who can keep them accountable for their planned actions and about reaching the envisioned destination. This gives raise to some interesting questions:

1. How do you best inspire people to follow you (into the digital workplace)?
2. What actions should you take, to be effective?
3. When they start to follow you, do you have an idea of where you want to go?

And what it take to inspire others to follow on the digital workplace? Does it have to complicated and require a lot of struggle? In my view, with clearly directed actions, and they can be quite small, that are repeated regularly over time and that have a clear direction can have great effects. What inspire people are determination, working towards a vision and dream. And if you have a true and authentic interest for IT tools, productivity, communication, collaboration than there’s potential for inspiring a great many. And a good way to lead in the digital workplace is to act in the same way that you would like others to act.

Why is this difficult for many of us? Well, taking leadership in the digital workplace does require energy and focus to start to take the right actions. A lack of knowledge of the right strategy and uncertainty about the payoffs are also at play.

But all in all, there are plenty of opportunity for you to take action, small steps that after some time will have moved you quite far. And what about the destination? Normally a sense of a viable vision and dream  is unfolding on the path, when you get your feet wet with practical work in the apps of Office 365.

So do you feel your calling for taking an active leadership for your digital workplace?