Today’s business leader operates in a fluid landscape where hierarchies and structures are constantly changing due to the emergence of social, mobile, and cloud technologies.

 

On one hand, social, mobile, and cloud platforms are empowering customers to be more discerning and to get what they want, when they want it. On the other hand, these flexible technologies are creating flatter organisational structures, with social tools opening the opportunity for better internal collaboration and new ways of ideas-sharing from the bottom up. The challenge for business leaders is how to utilise social, mobile, and cloud technologies to smash down internal silos to better engage their teams and get closer to their customers.

 

Flatter organisations encourage employees to take initiative without needing approval from multiple managers. Instead of a culture of top-down management, cloud, social, and mobile technologies empower employees to actively contribute to decision-making and to take ownership of company processes and relationships. For some companies, this new reality can be a daunting prospect. However, in the emerging Customer Engagement Economy, only those leaders prepared to cultivate a culture of real-time collaboration and embrace a degree of chaos will thrive.

 

To drive this evolution, business leaders have to get social. More and more, customers are choosing to buy and engage with brands using social media and it is now an essential touch point for every company. As a result, leaders need to be as intimate with social as every other sales channel. Not only is social media where your customers are, it’s where your employees are—or should be. Social platforms facilitate unprecedented internal collaboration, ensuring your teams are more productive and aligned. Just as importantly, social media equips your people with the information they need to engage with customers and partners at the speed of today’s real-time world. Vodafone is a prime example of this. Similarly, cloud and mobile platforms give teams on the go access to the knowledge and tools they need to interact with customers and partners in a differentiated way.

 

Leaders must also have a clear vision for using cloud, social and mobile technologies to mobilise ongoing innovation. Only these technologies have the flexibility to enable companies to rapidly respond to the perpetually changing market demands of the Customer Engagement Economy. Real-time, collaboration-fuelled innovation is essential to maintaining a competitive advantage and consistently delivering a frictionless customer experience. However, customer-centred innovation creates a degree of chaos. A vibrant culture of innovation sprouts many and varied ideas. As a result, excellent leadership is increasingly being defined by a capacity to balance chaos and control. This requires a new governance approach that matches the speed of business today.

 

Leadership is changing. To read real-world examples of the changing roles of leaders in high-profile companies around the world, download The Essential Guide to Customer Obsession.