Providing Leadership Guidance In A Digital Age
Companies today face pressures from both external and internal sources to find ways to cut down costs and raise revenues. This ultimately raises the question, how can leaders remain a valuable asset to an organization and provide leadership guidance without getting phased out from technology solutions in an increasingly complex digital age? We have compiled a helpful set of guidelines to provide leadership guidance in today’s digital age.
How Leadership Is Changing In A Digital Age
Leadership used to be categorized as providing command and control in various situations. Whether it was a command on when or how to do something, or control in monitoring those actions and gauging across several metrics – it’s no longer that simple. Increasingly, leadership is changing in a digital age by how well leaders can identify new solutions and monitor the addition of those new solutions.
Previously, leaders were expected to maintain a close relationship with their peers and subordinates, but now they must learn to provide leadership from a distance – which can be difficult for some.
The days of continually checking in with employees or peers to monitor their progress are long over, it’s all digital now. Few industries notice the effects of leadership from a distance greater than the healthcare industry. As an example, when a nurse goes into a patient’s room, they scan the barcode on the wristband of the patient. From there, they then scan any IV drips or medication provided to the patient. All this, while using a mobile unit that has the employee’s ID and employee number in the system and provides real-time updates to a system that is easily monitored.
This allows nurse leaders and healthcare executives to monitor patient treatment frequencies, medication delivered, and employee rotation. It wasn’t too long ago when healthcare leaders had to walk around each floor and monitor the progress of their subordinates and peers.
How Leaders Can Provide Guidance In The Changing Environment
Even though companies look to cut down on expenses and switch to these real-time digital solutions that are less expensive and increase productivity overall, leaders are still needed – their role just changes slightly.
Moving forward, leaders can provide guidance in how they seek out new solutions and then monitor the implementation of those new solutions. In addition, leaders can provide guidance by assisting employees and peers with learning those new solutions and monitoring room for improvement in existing technologies.
Some of the biggest trends in today’s digital age are automation, cloud computing, and big data. Individuals can provide leadership guidance by understanding how these trends are being used and can potentially be implemented to improve daily methods and procedures.
Leaders must become more accustomed to making decisions through the use of these modern digital technologies. In the event these new digital solutions don’t provide the answers one is looking for, leaders must find new ways to manipulate the technologies for answers to their questions. Increasingly, leaders can no longer only be accustomed to using one program or digital solution. Instead, leaders must learn how to manipulate and become proficient in a host of different technology solutions.
Summary
In conclusion, previous leadership guidance and styles many are accustomed to no longer work in today’s digital age. With new technological solutions that eliminate the need for peer-to-peer or employer-to-employee interaction, leaders should find ways to become accustomed to balancing the changing environment of the modern digital age. Leaders can provide guidance in learning new digital solutions, implementation, and improvement of those solutions.
More so than ever, leaders are needed to help push every industry forward by being the driving force to create and implement digital solutions that will help cut cost, improve customer service, and raise revenues.
Thank you to our guest post contributor, Ryan Bucci, a Content Strategist with HospitalCareers.com. HospitalCareers is the leading healthcare and hospital recruitment platform with over 25,000+ hospital jobs, career advice, and insights for qualified healthcare professionals.