Many managers today are facing a daunting challenge.  They entered business in the industrial age.  In the industrial age a person worked to become a subject matter expert in their department or discipline.  In addition, they mastered the tasks and activities that would create a high-quality work product.  Add to that they developed the discipline to plan their work and control the actions to achieve specific goals.   They were good at what they did and they justifiably were promoted.  

But now comes the digital age.  These individuals are not digital natives.  They have engrained habits and practices that work well in the old paradigm, but the paradigm has shifted.  Managers now must operate in an environment that has both more data and less certainty.  Speed of execution becomes paramount, but not at the expense of quality.  Org charts and business structures are constantly changing leading to managers directing virtual teams from around the world whose makeup is regularly changing.  

In this environment, there are five key managerial disciplines that are changing.  A digital age manager must be able to manage with digital age practices in all five to be successful.  Wronski Associate’s has developed a training program to aid managers in transforming themselves to be successful in the digital age.  In the program, we will describe these five disciplines as a continuum from the industrial age practices to the digital age practices.  As a business transforms to digital practices, the department, processes and teams will be at various points along each continuum.  In this program, we will describe the five continuum, explore the digital age practices and discuss how a manager can transform from industrial age to digital age practices.

Practice 1: (Cross-functional Process vs Silo Optimization) - Less functional subject matter expertise and optimized functional performance, and more cross-functional process execution for orders of magnitude, faster speed, and more responsive customer quality delivery.

Practice 2: (Coaching Empowered Decision-making vs Direction and Control) - Less directing of employees concerning detailed tasks and activities and more coaching employees to make autonomous decisions.

Practice 3: (Iterative Continuous Improvement vs Inflexible Budgets and Schedules) - Less detailed budgets, schedules, plans and status updates and more iterative actions with pivot points to accommodate the constantly changing business landscape.

Practice 4: (Real-time Data and Analytics vs Experience, Intuition, and Anecdotes) - Less reliance on experience, intuition, and tribal knowledge and more reliance on real-time data and acquiring insights from data analytics. 

Practice 5: (Real-time Digital Communication vs Calendar-based Meetings) - Less formal meetings, presentations, reports, and in-depth manual research and more ad hoc and virtual discussion with all levels and departments in the organization with a strong reliance on real-time data and instant Google searches.  

This program consists of five days of training.  In addition to the classroom material, there will be one or two articles for additional reading on each topic.  The five sessions can be run sequentially through one week, or they can be conducted as separate stand-alone sessions.  

CALL US TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS TRANSFORMATIVE PROGRAM