Executive Leadership Help Wanted: GlobalSway's CEO Offers Her Expertise
In a recent episode of The DEX Show Podcast, we invited Patti Blackstaffe (CEO, GlobalSway) to share her insights about executive leadership today and the paradigm shift that it’s experiencing due to the changing ways of the digital workplace.
Blackstaffe examines how technology is revolutionizing traditional leadership models and workforce trends. Additionally, she underscores the importance of effective communication between technical experts and executive leadership, providing practical tips to improve collaboration and drive organizational success.
Below, we've summarized key excerpts from that recording for our readers in the IT community.
How has tech changed the executive leadership model?
We have never before been in an environment with so much converging change. The converging forces on our businesses, whether it's economies, shareholder reputation, environment, climate, community, worker perception have all changed.
I think that networks, software, connections, interconnections, partnerships, board governance, revenue, changes in profits and how they're achieved, customer expectations, the entire business is being impacted that way. And people caught up, especially during that pandemic, people caught up with their ability to move to the cloud and really it just accelerated everything which changed our environments.
Our entire businesses are run digitally now. And most people would say that if you lose your connection, you lose your business. It's a whole different world than the industrial era, right?
We are really, really hyper-connected and we have a different type of worker that is kind of writing a new social contract and leaders are a little bit befuddled.
What does digital workplace maturity mean to you?
I think that when we talk about maturity, we talk about playing the long game, building organizational trust and learning how to lead high performers. If we're looking at digital workplace maturity, then we have to understand the people that are working in them. We're talking about very, very smart people with some pretty specialized skills.
Maturity means that we have to be much like a surfer riding a wave, right? You're riding a wave and you think about that. You have to balance and be able to adjust every time the wave adjusts and every wave is different.
Let's (executives) look at our strategic outcomes and the objectives that we're trying to meet because that's why we're in business. But very few companies challenge their executive leaders to define their principles against those business objectives, nor do they set performance that way. I think that a strategic leadership plan has to be in line to look at the entire system.
How would you rate the relationship today between IT and executive leadership?
I think IT is still looked upon by leadership as these guys in the basement corner managing desktops. There is a paradigm shift that has to happen in business where the respect is a two-way street. And these folks, when you look back on the disjointed efforts, inefficiency, fragmentation at the very top and through all the departments, the failure to hire digital leaders, the stifled innovation, they're trying to adapt. Oh, this new cool tech, I'd love to be able to apply this and adapt it to the organization, but no one's listening to me.
So when you look at ITSM and ESM efforts where they're trying to bring other departments in and they're saying, ‘hey, you know, we really, really want to be able to help you and we think we can.’ And then they get shut down because they're viewed as these annoyances down in the basement, right? It creates an atmosphere where they don't feel like they have the conditions in place in order to succeed.
I can't even believe that it's 2024 and we still have micromanagers. Ineffective decision-making, meaning my voice doesn't matter. You're making decisions and you never once ask people in the know.
I think we need to open up the door to learning what exactly we need to do to set the conditions in an organization in order for adaptability to be accepted and practiced. And then we need to really take a look at how individuals have been treated.
What work needs to be done to fixing that relationship?
We started with the individual and then moved to teams. Now let's work with the system. But what was interesting is we never ever, ever got a chance to change or shift paradigm at the executive level, and I think those go hand in hand.
So the book that we just wrote (Upheaval: an Executive’s guide to Organizational Digital Leadership) is one in a series of four books, three to come out soon. The first three were the first actual planned activities that we wanted to approach organizations with, and we suddenly realized as we were going into these organizations that everything we tried to do at the individual level was not supported at the executive level.
So then we took a step back and said, we have to write a different book to start with because this starts first. So let's take a look at that. We're not upskilling people. We're not investing. And I think that the organization that invests in training understands their skills.
We have five different generations in our organizations right now, many of which are sharing the same values.
They want to contribute, they want to be heard, and they want to be brought along as they go. And so they're missing some of the pieces individually that make them adaptable, how influence works both ways, the different kinds of how to set and get expectations. So those expectations we believe are the foundations or the essentials for the individual.
How can you influence people to build a healthy work environment?
You can start by asking 'what does the environment look like for me as an individual and for the people around me?'. Having the code of courage to be able to understand how to address conflict. We're living in a conflict epidemic. We've got so many people who believe disagreement is conflict.
So we'll have somebody that we might call a dinosaur, but if we tap into the commonality of the values they have for the organization, connect them with the right people, and give them the right training to be able to work together, then we’re influencing them in a positive way, both individually and collaboratively. That change triggers a knock-on effect that can help companies grow and create cultures which are stronger and more supportive.
