Business as usual is no longer an option. Leaders need to reinvent how they lead

WE are all experiencing it.

Change is no longer constant. It is accelerating, with uncertainty and threat of disruption in every industry segment.

Since November 2022, the four tech giants – Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon – have collectively retrenched 70,000 employees globally. Businesses are also fiercely competitive; many are accelerating their transformation efforts to stay relevant.

In my conversations with business leaders, they shared that the path to transformation faces obstacles as employees do not see the urgency for change. Leaders often find their employees disengaging, already overwhelmed with their workloads. I’m convinced what is needed is a reinvention in the way leaders lead,

Drawing from my research and experience as a corporate executive in the last 25 years, working in traditional organisations in the Fortune 500 list as well as startups, here are four strategies I think would help:

1) Build a culture of experimentation

One of the crucial steps in transforming organisations is to create a culture that encourages experimentation and celebrates failure as part of the learning process.

By building a culture of trust, leaders can empower their employees to take risks, explore new ideas, and learn from mistakes.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon said in his letter to shareholders in 1997: “Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day.”

To inject more agility and foster project-level dynamism, leaders can promote innovation and small-scale risk-taking, reduce overly centralised approval requirements for small initiatives, and implement “kill-switches” to prevent small projects from spiralling out of control.

A good example of an organisation which has successfully reinvented their culture is Haier, a leading Chinese appliance maker.

Haier entered the Internet age as a bureaucratic, hierarchical company full of middle managers, hampering innovation and business agility and distancing them from customers. To overcome this, they created agile squads and self-organised into thousands of microenterprises that responded directly to user needs.

The approach nurtured the organisation’s innovative and entrepreneurial instincts while sweeping away hierarchy, bureaucracy, and more than 12,000 middle managers.

Today, Haier remains a strong brand globally and continues its double-digit year-on-year growth.

In this case, the reorganisation into agile squads honed employee focus into being more customer-centric and responsive. Shifting the perspective of employees from being seen as mere “human resources” to “owners” can foster a sense of ownership and accountability, which in turn motivates them to contribute their best ideas and efforts.

So that’s an experimentation culture – a catalyst for change.

2) Think for the future

Of course, leaders are busy. Many often find themselves ensconced in day-to-day matters.

To stay ahead, though, they must allocate sufficient time and resources to envision the future and plan ahead for it. PwC’s 26th Annual Global CEO Survey confirms that there is a desire among CEOs to spend more time reinventing their business (for future demand) than they currently do, if they want to stay afloat beyond the next decade.

Here’s a story about Fujifilm – in the 1970s, the photography industry was hit by a jump in the price of silver, from US$5 to US$50 per ounce. Silver was an essential ingredient in photo processing and manufacturers like Kodak and Fujifilm were impacted.

When prices stabilised in 1980, Kodak and other players returned to business as usual. But Fujifilm’s new CEO Minoru Ohnishi was determined to reinvent and prepare the organisation for a radical shift in the photography business. Once Sony introduced its digital camera in 1984, he started building diverse digital capabilities.

By 2003, Fujifilm had over 4,000 mini digital processing labs in chain stores throughout the United States while Kodak had fewer than 100. But the company didn’t stop there. Fujifilm realised that some aspects of its technology could be used to enhance the human skin. These include collagen research, light analysis and control, antioxidation, and original nanotechnology.

So in 2007, Fujifilm went into high-end skincare with a range called Astalift. In reference to its origins, Astalift aimed to deliver “photogenic beauty” to its customers.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, Fujifilm was reporting revenues of US$22.1 billion, with global healthcare including cosmetics contributing 22 per cent or US$4.9 billion to that sum. This is a stellar showcase of reinvention, where leaders create capacity to think of the future.

The best leaders excel at navigating multiple timelines and adeptly handling short-term disruptions while simultaneously envisioning the future. The first step in cultivating a workforce primed for reinvention is a commitment to supporting their team’s journey towards transformation.

3) Create an organisation of value creators

As the workforce becomes more diverse with multiple generations working together, leaders must shift their focus from age demographics to cultivating a culture of value creation. Each generation brings unique perspectives and strengths, and by recognising and harnessing these diverse qualities, organisations can foster collaboration and innovation. Leaders need to redesign employees’ rewards based on their ability to create value rather than merely following orders.

I define creating value as going beyond your job description and outside what is expected of you. Value creation is an activity that results in change and transformation within the workplace.

In the earlier stages of my career at a Telco startup, I faced a unique challenge with no prior experiences or successes to draw from. Leading the team in a mission that had to be developed from scratch meant creating many firsts in the market. There were no rubrics, I relied on my imagination and courage, and through it, I learned the true essence of value creation.

Leaders need to earn a seat at the table by constantly demonstrating how they create value by thinking outside the box.

Netflix gives us a good example of this. Its leaders implemented the “keeper test” in their talent-management strategy. The line managers would ask “If a person on your team were to quit tomorrow, would you try to change their mind? Or would you accept their resignation, perhaps with a little relief?” They pay employees not based on how hard they work or their tenure, but based on how hard they are to replace.

This paradigm shift focuses on recruiting value creators. If this is the metric, ageism and gender bias would not be an issue, and certainly a culture where value creators are rewarded would grow into being.

4) Engage and inspire

In my coaching conversations with leaders, they recognise that their transformation plans depend on employees who can translate their vision into action. But this can happen only if employees understand how the company and industry is evolving and what it means to them.

Leaders can foster a compelling sense of urgency for upskilling by providing improved clarity and transparency on the impact of disruptions on their role. When they are able to inspire and instill excitement in people about the future, employees are more likely to embrace change and take ownership of their growth. Instituting dedicated time for learning and reflection would help too.

Leaders should also walk the talk – start with yourself to inspire trust. Leaders need to craft a compelling narrative around the organisation’s vision to convince their employees on the transformation journey.

Overhaul your leadership OS if you have to

As Singapore strives to lead on the global stage, leaders need to embrace a transformative approach to guide their organisations successfully into the future. This means rethinking their leadership operating system, the fundamental framework and principles that govern how they lead and manage.

The time for business as usual is over; the time for reinvention and innovation is now.

The writer is a leadership coach who helps leaders reinvent themselves to achieve greater purpose and impact