How HR can enable digital leadership

Author: Simon Schoop, Managing Director of 4-advice │ Change & Innovation, folgen Sie 4-advice auf  Twitter  @4advicenet oder Simon Schoop @simscho

How can the HR function become the key enabler for digital leadership in corporations?In a joint key note with Tim Steigert, Innovation Leader at General Electric, I had the pleasure to talk at the 3rd International Barcelona HR Conference in October 2016.

The analogy we used were the Olympic games. And I can tell you, there are so many analogies between sports and business, it was great fun to prepare and give the speech in the Palau de la Musica in the heart of Barcelona. To be and remain successful it takes people, technology and organization… and technology is not the only key to success. Also it´s not just about the highest budget that makes the difference between digital leaders versus digital laggards. If you don´t have the right mindset and culture in your organization, no technology will help you to succeed.

Picture Source: 3rd Intl. HR Conference/ Advantage Consultores.

What was the event that united humanity the most in 2016?

Of course, the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. More than half of the world´s population watched the Games in front of their TV: About four billion people. Wow. That´s quite a lot.That was in Summer 2016. Now this is TV. But what if you take into account Internet Broadcasting too? It´s even much, much more impressive. There was more live streaming from Rio than for all combined Olympic Games ever before. This illustrates the neckbreaking speed of digitalization very well.In our speech, we have shown how sports performances have developed over the last century and drawn comparisons to digital transformation and how executives could or should deal with it accordingly – in order to still be in business when the next Olympic Games will take place in Tokyo in 2020.

‚Combining people, technology and organization in the right way, enables digital leadership.‘

Take for example Alexander Pointner, the most successful ski jumping coach ever. Only by combining multiple aspects such as the great Austrian ski jump athletes (people) with big data and science (technology) and empathy and organization, he managed to achieve his unmatched successes. And this formula also applies for the business. In business, one also needs to take into account the cultural resistance that needs to be overcome in order to succeed in today´s ultra competitive digital transformation landscape.

3rd International HR Conference Barcelona from HR Conference on Vimeo.

If you are interested in booking Simon as a key note speaker, please contact us. We are more than happy to coordinate dates and adapt Simon´s key note topics to your specific conference purpose.

Weiterführende Links

3rd International Barcelona HR Conference 

Tim Steigert:LinkedIn Profile |https://de.linkedin.com/in/timsteigertGeneral Electric | http://www.ge.comFolgen Sie Tim Steigert auf Twitter  | @t_1_m 

Simon Schoop:LinkedIn Profile |https://de.linkedin.com/in/simonschoopMore publications from  Simon  |  4-advice.net Digital Transformation Insider |  4-advice.netFolgen Sie Simon Schoop auf Twitter | @simscho and @4advicenet