I’ve had an interesting journey. Born before colour TV, PCs, mobile phones, the internet, & search engines, I am now a go to guy for automation technology, networking, manufacturing solutions, & business visualisation. In a long career selling & promoting technologies, engineering & delivering industrial solutions, I’ve needed to attune to change & developments which disrupt. These changes are accelerating, & their potential for impact is growing. So in this environment of flux & re-adaptation, what’s needed to survive? Reflecting on the success of the enterprises I have worked for or supported, one skill emerges as essential for enabling entrepreneurial success. It is design.
It is process design, operational design, product design, systems design, design of anything that solves a business problem. It can be for technologies. It can be for services. It can be for any aspect of business. CEOs of the most innovative companies of our time & the new wave of disruptors all use this to great effect. To lead their organisations through great change & do more than survive. To thrive.
I don’t say it’s the only skill needed for success, or downplay other leadership traits, but design is so relevant for the opportunities before us, & for dealing with disruption & competition. Its importance is that it’s the enabler of innovation. New CEOs must become proficient in it, because this is what enables them to innovate & pull off “impossible” wins like Steve Jobs & Elon Musk. It’s valuable because technology is becoming ever more accessible & quick to integrate into commercial opportunities. IIoT, virtualisation, 24/7/365 global collaboration, & more, are providing enterprise with abundant resources for the next big win. Business leaders that can design are able take advantage. Lofty CEOs propped up by layers of minions & disconnected from the engine room are endangered.
Leading design also legitimises a leader’s mandate for leadership. CEO’s that orchestrate their organisation’s next big win are less likely to come under attack as those that leave it to others. So how does a non-tech savvy leader learn how to design complex & often highly technical solutions? It’s not as difficult as you think.
Designing industrial automation solutions requires cross discipline, cross platform, multi-industry design, yet can be readily communicated & coordinated by non-technical business leaders. How is this possible? By functional design. Automation engineers use a design principle commonly used by software developers to create functional designs, which specify the functionality of a software application, only this is applied to a much wider design. This is how automation engineers integrate cross discipline, cross platform, multi-industry design. At its heart though, this is non-technical design, & is ideal for business leaders to learn. Using it they can take charge of innovation in their business. The only caveat is not to learn by trial & error, without expecting major consequences. If well trained & proficient though, it is the only way to innovate successfully with least cost.
With good guidance & proper training, a non-tech savvy business leader can readily learn design principles from automation to become an effective business innovation leader, & enable their organisation to thrive in a time of disruption & change. Their initiative legitimises their mandate for leadership, & ensures the best chance for an organisation’s success. Innovation is not left to chance, it is designed.