On May 14-15, the 2019 International HR-tech Conference with the theme of “Technology Empowering People” was held at the Shanghai World Expo Center. The conference brought together many top experts from the industry and arranged more than 30 forums and events. It has gathered more than 400 HR leaders, technology product suppliers and service providers from all over the world. Thousands of HR professionals have feasted together.

Leader’s Gene Leadership Consulting, as one of the partners of the conference and the leading leadership consulting firm in China, was invited to participate in the exhibition hall to provide professional consultation; Jack Lim, the Founder and Managing Director of Leader’s Gene, was also invited to share at the forum on "Agile Genes - Organization, Talent and Leadership of the Digital Era", with hundreds of HR professionals from around the world attending. 

Leader’s Gene’s view

Excerpted from: Jack Lim, Managing Director of Reed Leadership, at the 2019 International HR - Tech Conference 

From the long farming era to the structural industrial era to the digital era full of uncertainties, human evoles in science, technology, production mode, war methods, management, etc. over the past 2000 years, which shows that human beings are entering the digital era. 

The most far-reaching impact of the digital era is the complexity caused by the information network, and this complexity will surely lead to VUCA. Our foothold is changing. The goal that leaders lead everyone to achieve is also uncertain, volatile and fuzzy. We are in the first two decades of the new era. The technological and economic development brought about by the grand digital era is difficult to predict. We cannot blindly use what we are used to in the industrial era to cope with the challenges of the new era. 

Digital era requires our management thinking to have agile genes.

The industrial era moves toward the digital era, from mechanized organizational models and management ideas to organic organizational models and management concepts, from top-down Command&Control to decentralized empowerment and collaboration, from the pyramid organization structure to self-organizing transformation in which everyone is self-aware and seeks their own values and meanings. 

The agile work mode in the digital era is from a traditional Gantt chart to a short-term Sprint. It is a transition from KPI to OKR. The important thing is not the position, but everyone’s ability, especially cross-functional collaboration. 

Learning agility is an important indicator of future talents, namely the ability to quickly learn and apply to new and challenging leadership situations, and the ability to acquire high performance. Learning agility is an “meta-competency”, i.e., the competency to gain the competency, or the ability to acquire the ability.

The main role of the digital era leader:

Flag-bearer: Inspiring people with mission, vision and values; attracting followers with true self;

Switching workers: Strongly promote organizational change; overcome resistance and persist in the implementation of change;

Spider-Man: Build and maintain a network, link as many nodes as possible; integrate forces from all sides to maintain overall interests;

Gardener: Create and maintain a healthy ecological environment that allows talent or teams within the organization to grow naturally. 

The outstanding leaders of the Digital era are always good at shaping the agile genes of organizations and talents to cope with the changes in high-speed dynamics. For more information on “Agile Genes - Organization, Talent and Leadership of the Digital Era”, please inquire Leader’s Gene Consulting.