Digital transformation: How to empower your most adaptable people
At its core, digital transformation is about the need to modernize. It’s about disrupting, changing, and responding to the competition. It’s the people on our teams who actually propel us toward our goals and lead us through this transformation. It’s up to us as leaders to identify a particular subset of individuals who are capable of working in an agile manner while accelerating the business.
I call them adaptivists. This probably isn’t the first time this term has been used, but it is a perfect descriptor of what is needed in organizations today.
Adaptivists are capable of playing across verticals. They see the big picture and can move seamlessly from one area of the business to another while translating challenges, ideas, and plans along the way. They might, for example, engage and bring together stakeholders from various technical disciplines who were not originally involved in a project or issue.
The adaptivist’s ability to see around corners and play out future moves in the chess game enables them to plug holes before they become an issue. In some cases, the adaptivists themselves may actually play a hands-on role implementing or troubleshooting a technology. They not only see the potential pitfalls that may exist, they also actively engage in mitigating or solving them.
Because the speed of change isn’t slowing, we can no longer stop, analyze, and deliberate about a strategy when we’re thrown a curveball. We need to react with flexibility and tackle problems after just a little thoughtful deliberation. We don’t have the luxury of long, drawn-out processes of strategic evaluation – we need to start moving quickly.
Adaptivists – who excel at adaptability and flexibility – help us do that. They solve problems a piece at a time. Their flexibility and adaptability lead to agility and incremental progress toward a goal – not with perfection in mind, but by moving the needle every day.
