Wendy Smith Interviewed

There’s an urgent need for companies to shift their focus from developing individuals to enabling networks and relationships between employees, and authentic transformation leaders know how important this is to orchestrate better business performance. In this episode, Jon Ingham, author of the book “The Social Organization” elaborates on some of the strategic, innovative approaches to people management and organisation effectiveness that leaders can consider.

These days, leaders face contradictory challenges. They could be under pressure to make incremental improvements, while at the same time invent radically new business models. This results in ongoing tensions between succeeding for today while transforming for tomorrow. Wendy Smith has spent considerable time exploring how adopting a both/and approach to these kinds of tensions enables individuals and organisations to achieve results that are more creative, generative, and sustainable.

Healthcare is something we all depend upon in the most personal and intimate of ways, and how this industry evolves as a result of digital transformation will impact many of us. Heather Hancock has 20 years of experience in this space and she believes that technology has three purposes of value in it. These are to improve the patient experience, improve population health and reduce the per capital cost of healthcare.

These days, large, successful organisations are experiencing flat growth, acquisition, and in some cases, bankruptcy. What they’ve done in the past to make bring them success no longer works as it did. And doing more of the same won't bring them to where they need to be to remain in business for the next 5, 10, 20 years. Australian transformation leader Heidi Beets explains how companies of the future are designed, and don't happen by accident.

The successful orchestration of business transformation requires a collaborative operating model between business, technology, and data teams. Void of the digital sugar coating and delusion of transformation that is leading so many established companies to an early grave. Isaac Sacolick - author of Amazon bestseller ‘Driving Digital’ - elaborates on why agile practices are at the heart of executing transformation and he shares examples of what he refers to as ‘bottoms-up transformation’.

The view of transformation and change can often be one-sided as it takes on the language of the originator and doesn't translate well to those who don't understand that language. This means that a breakdown in communication can happen very quickly. Andrew Ward elaborates on ‘The Layers of Change’, which is a way to model a change so we can all understand it, whether you're from a UX, CX, architectural or business discipline. 

Disruption is an opportunity for those with the right mindset but a threat to the rest. With recent advances in technology, the possibilities to innovate and disrupt are greater than ever, regardless of size. Daniel Burrus, author of the book ‘The Anticipatory Organization’ explains how he believes we can anticipate disruption before it happens, and turn it into opportunity and advantage.

An increasing number of leaders know that to accelerate digital transformation their organisations should learn to flex their empathic muscle, while at the same time encode empathy in Artificial Intelligence. Following the launch of his latest book “Heartificial Empathy” Award winning author Minter Dial elaborates on the role empathy plays in digital transformation, its importance for business executives, and how organisations can weave empathy into their fabric.

A continuous stream of well-established companies is in decline and going out of business because despite their past success, they’ve not been able to either defend or orchestrate disruptive transformation in a way that allows them to thrive in the new digital economy. In this episode, Charlene Li–author of five books and Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter–talks about her belief that more companies need to stop talking about disruption and start doing it. And she’ll share some ways to get started with that.

The threat of disruption from smaller, more digitally savvy firms has motivated big corporates to launch efforts to build disruptors of their own. A few have succeeded, while many are wondering how to convert new ideas into new revenue. Andy Binns - an Executive Fellow at the Center for the Future of Organization, at Drucker School of Management - explains that most firms over emphasize ideation at the expense of two other innovation disciplines. He also elaborates on what they can do to correct that and accelerate the odds of success.