Keep Your Team Together in the Gig Economy

We have transcended to the digital era, and the critical thing that needs to happen is a full digital transformation. Unfortunately, many large and medium corporations are still working on a traditional business model. The best organisations have made this transformation not just in terms of upgrading technology but also in terms of the actual root, which is leadership.

Organisational culture comes from the leaders, and many leaders are not trained to manage in the digital era. The reality is that 2019 will be the final year before the pressure gets put on organisations to get on board.

In 2020, we will see a massive increase in the workforce. Gen Z will be joining the workforce. The Millennials and Gen X will be getting more leadership roles. More people are at work and need to work for longer. It’s down to the new leaders who will comprise of Gen Y and millennials. There is a sense of urgency with all the factors coming together in 2020 to create what I like to call, the perfect storm.

I just completed research where I found that Asia is the most progressed region in digital leadership. Asia’s hierarchy is flattening out, and new leadership skills are emerging. Asia is leapfrogging ahead of traditional Western organisations of the 1950s to 1990s. The Western organisations have grown step by step over the decades but from a digital point of view, emerging markets in Asia, especially China and Japan, are able to learn quickly and not go through that journey anymore.

What limits the Western countries?

A lack of awareness for these transformation needs, a lack of leadership skills and an apathy towards leadership.

Leaders are just not owning the process of what it takes to be a digital business. Similar to the US and the UK, Australia is not performing as compared to its Asian counterparts. In Europe, immobilisation is an added issue. The organisations in the Eurozone have consistent policy and procedures in place, but they are slow to change the rules and regulations. It takes years to get anywhere, and as a result, countries in the Eurozone are lagging behind everyone else in the world. They are even lagging behind countries in Europe that are outside of the Eurozone.

So, what is Asia doing that everyone else isn’t?

Asia is marrying both Western and Eastern practices.

It’s not that Asia is doing things differently, but Asia is applying learnings by looking outside and shaping the way that they work to adapt to the requirements. While the West is focused on its own ways, Asian countries like China and Vietnam are marrying success stories from both the East and the West.

For instance, China has aspirations to go global, and they can already see how communications is able to do that. This aspiration helps them implement changes, and they are able to break out of the traditional ways of working in both the political and commercial sense. State level factors also impact the behaviour of leaders.

It helps that Asia has authoritarians that are not controlling. There’s a directive where it's needed, and that brings with it clarity, direction and speed of action. There’s a lot of freedom within that.

Country differences aside, the next worry in the digital era is whether there’ll be enough jobs for everyone globally. Are people going to lose their jobs?