Organizations that choose to implement Industry 4.0 technologies must ensure that senior leaders have the right mindsets and capabilities to manage such a change. This transformation will be essential for those who want to thrive in tomorrow's business world. Improving growth, profitability, customer satisfaction and employee engagement, among other things, are areas with significant room for performance gains. The key to agile organizations is that they are both stable and dynamic. Adaptive, fluid, open, inclusive and non-hierarchical, they thrive in unpredictability and ambiguity.
It is therefore not surprising that users are the main obstacle to implementing 4.0. However, this barrier does not only stem from the reluctance of shop-floor employees. Studies confirm that leadership and the way it is structured is the main drawback, while also being a powerful catalyst for successful agile change. In terms of the new capabilities that leaders must acquire, McKinsey & Company identified the following three:
- Transform themselves to develop new mindsets and behaviors
- Transform their teams to use new ways of working
- Build the capabilities to transform the organization by embedding agility into the company's design and culture
Industry 4.0 leaders will first need to develop their inner agility. To do this, their mindset must shift from reactive to creative. By cultivating innovation, collaboration and value creation through these three mindset shifts, organizations will be properly equipped to create an ideal agile environment.
- From certainty to discovery: fostering innovation. Leaders need to move away from stability and traditional ways of working to embrace more risk and experimentation.
- From authority to partnership: fostering collaboration. Agile workplaces promote collaboration and networks of empowered teams where the management style is based on freedom, trust and accountability.
- From scarcity to abundance: fostering value creation. As today's markets evolve at an incredible pace, leaders must recognize the unlimited resources and potential value they can bring to the business.
How do you prepare your leaders?
Now that we have covered the concepts and mindsets organizations must adopt to successfully transition to an agile work environment, how do we develop these leaders? Once again, the McKinsey report suggests five essential elements for improving everyone's capabilities:
- Establish a framework of business agility coaches
- Get the top team engaged in developing its own capabilities
- Create an immersive leadership experience
- Invite leaders to put their learning into practice
- Roll out leadership capability building at an agile pace
Directly involving your teams and, more importantly, your leaders, in the transition to agile leadership will drive adoption of 4.0 technologies across your workforce.
To read McKinsey & Company's full report on agile leadership, click here.
