Keying thoughts: The Power of Imagination
and that pesky half empty glass
Whoops! Baby in the bathwater!
James A. Champy wonders that thought at HBR’s, Imagining the Future of Leadership.
But I worry more that the world of web 2.0 — and what comes after — will distract, not add, from the skill of leaders, make them more, rather than less, remote.
…
Real leadership requires relationships and personal engagement. Nothing I see in technology has yet to replace these qualities. I believe that technology will enable new business models, but not “new leadership”.
Champy writes, “I recently heard a retired general, a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, quoted as saying the only way he knew what was really happening was to be with his troops in the jungle.” That may have been true at that time. However, today a general on the front line, physically, in that moment, may sense the tactical environment; But if she’s to be a thought leader in military geostrategy, who as SecDef will call the shots, she’ll need more data than a cellphone and CCN can supply.
The present state of global connectivity, technologically so, is, in my opinion, the requisite condition for the emergence of a new cultural synthesis. As David Orban, Chairman, Humanity+, advises, “human civilization depends on our ability to manage its increasing complexity.” We live, now and tomorrow, in a world of interdependence. In this Age of Analytics, leadership will call for sophisticated information technology and communications.
Real leadership requires relationships and personal engagement. Indeed it does. And real leadership has the affirmative burden to imagine technology, in the enabling sense, furthering global social connectedness.