By:
Melvin Greer
Managing Director, Greer Institute
Melvin Greer
Managing Director, Greer Institute
There are many important characteristics of great leaders. Team
players, good listeners and visionary are clear hallmarks. But being ambidextrous
is required now more than ever. Ambidextrous leadership is a balanced approach
where flexible leadership behaviors that lead to better business outcomes are
the rule.
Ambidexterity is the ability to engage in innovation (exploration)
and operation (exploitation) equally well. But these are two very different yet
complementary leadership behaviors.
- Exploitation: Reducing variance, adherence to rules, alignment and risk avoidance
- Exploration: Increasing variance, experimentation and failure, value alternatives and risk taking
And why is ambidextrous leadership required now more than ever?
Leadership is in crises and leaders are facing an increasing set of complex
issues. This crisis manifests itself in a lack of employee engagement and
retention along with lower market share and business performance. According to 2013 Ketchum Leadership study there is an unambiguous
crisis of confidence in leaders.
According to the survey, just 24 percent of people around the
world believe leaders overall are providing effective leadership. Poor
leadership directly hits sales, and in 2012, 60 percent of people boycotted or
bought less from a company due to poor leadership behavior. This assessment
indicates that we are experiencing an innovation gap where today’s leaders have neglected leadership behavior that fosters
innovation in favor of operational performance.
What makes ambidextrous leadership hard is that innovation is a
complex and non-linear activity. There is a dynamic lifecycle and pace of
innovation, combined with situational variability. This requires leaders to
develop temporal flexibility—the ability to know when to do what for maximum
business impact. Given the focus on innovation, today’s leaders are encouraged
to develop a 21st Century Leadership model, which emphasizes ambidextrous
leadership.
So what does it take to become an ambidextrous leader? Here are
some key first steps:
1.
Develop an ability to harness disruptive innovations. I’ve identified four disruptive innovations that are
impacting leaders and leadership. IT knowledge has traditionally been confined
to the IT department, but not anymore. Today any leader should be able to read
a P&L or interpret and operate a balance sheet; they should be able to
understand how technology will impact the business strategy of their
organization.
2.
Drive innovation via workforce and talent. Innovative leadership requires systematic innovation; a
tight linkage to the development of a strong workforce and the development of
future leaders, students via a robust science, technology, engineering, and
math (STEM) pipeline.
The book, 21st Century Leadership, drills down to illuminate what makes leaders so good at
innovation and talent, and describes how to move an innovation strategy from
“chasing shiny objects” to a powerful, sustainable cultural change and create a
magnet for great talent. The goal is to mature new leaders and inspire future
innovators. This is how we, as leaders, turn this disruption from a challenge
into an opportunity for business growth via innovation.
By taking these steps we
can close the innovation gap and avoid leadership behavior that atrophies
innovation in favor of operational performance. We can truly have ambidexterity
leadership and engage in innovation and operational activities equally well.
The Boston Consulting Group in its top 20 most innovative companies for 2014 (https://www.bcgperspectives.
( This post was written as part of the Dell Content Partners program, which provides news and analysis on technology, business and gadget-geek culture. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.)
