JACD 71-4 - American College of Dentists

National Leadership Symposium
24
The essential leadership
question is, “How will
the technology transform
the organization and
is this transformation,
including purchase
and maintenance costs,
retraining, altered
interactions with
customers and business
partners, and unintended
consequences in other
operations, desirable?”
Communicating Effectively
Understanding your business and its
context, building a vision, and creating
a culture that ensures identity through
change are all important elements of
leadership. But each is multiplied or
diminished by a leader’s communication
skills. Leaders must be able to send
messages that make the organization
meaningful to all its diverse constituencies
—to employees across many education
levels and roles, to customers, regulators,
and business partners. It is not the same
organization to all of these groups.
A lot of people confuse open communications
with effective communications.
Communication has to produce the
right result. It is a time-consuming and
expensive process, so it needs to serve a
purpose for the organization. At Cisco
Systems, every month anyone who has
a birthday is invited to a Chat with
Chambers breakfast, which is an open
forum for anyone to ask me anything
about what’s going on at Cisco or in the
industry. Together, we challenge our
strategy and where we are going.
At Cisco, we constantly gather
feedback. We talk about every customer
visit and how well did and what needs
improvement. When we speak to our
employees, every session is rated online
immediately. By the time the next
group comes in, we will have already
made adjustments.
Measuring Results
Leaders are oriented toward results.
I never get results confused with hard
work, and that is one of the hardest
lessons to learn as a leader because you
always want to reward the person who
is working the hardest. As a leader, you
have to be realistic and focus on results.
Increasingly in this complex world,
results come from effective teamwork.
The Dynamics of Technology
The role of technology in promoting
effective organizations is also prone to
misunderstanding. The problem comes
from confusing the surface features of
technology with its deep structure.
Information technology offers dramatic
features and large changes in tasks.
It is also both ubiquitous outside of
organizations and either transparent or
highly technical. These features combine
to create a situation where the push for
information technology comes from
diverse and unpredictable places in the
organization rather from the top and
where leaders are less likely to understand
the technology on a structural
level than are many other members of
the organization.
Although the sizzle of technology
features is seductive, intelligent leaders
insist that technology in organizations
be understood in functional terms. The
leader need not know in detail about the
mechanical specifications of technology
or even what new functions are possible.
The essential leadership question is,
“How will the technology transform the
organization and is this transformation,
including purchase and maintenance
costs, retraining, altered interactions
with customers and business partners,
and unintended consequences in other
operations desirable?”
Organizations that invest in process
change before or in parallel with their
technology change enjoy a four- to fivefold
productivity increase over those
who simply add the same technology.
We even have customers who throw
money at technology without changing
2005 Volume 71, Number 4