What Tomorrow's Leading Enterprises Are Doing Today

Technology today has become synonymous with both innovation and disruption. And with incredible technological innovation and disruption brings new risks -- but also new opportunities to advance and transform our organizations, societies, and economies. We live in a big data world, where supply chains are global, services are being digitized, and an increasing number of smart devices are being connected to each-other, to "things" and to the Internet in new and exciting ways. Naturally, all of the change around us calls into question the "traditional" way of doing business. It also raises important questions about how leaders can ensure that they keep pace with, and stay one step ahead by having the right information at the right time to make the right decisions that protect the financial and reputational well-being of the organization. Businesses of all ages and sizes should stop and reflect now on their organizational culture, their operating structure, and their talent, all in the name of creating the modern, leading and enduring enterprises of the future.

Culture

Looking out across Silicon Valley, technology plays a critical and enabling role in supporting collaboration, which creates fertile ground for innovation and ground-breaking advancement. In today's mobile, global, social, and connected world, organizations are working more and more with their extended external partners, as well as freelancers, eLancers, and other independent collaborators, all in the spirit of co-innovation. Business leaders must continuously look for new ways to foster collaboration amongst siloed units, as well as their extended ecosystem.
When it comes to creating a system of intelligence for the organization, we are seeing the power of GRC as it brings together IT, security, and the business as true partners, to understand and manage risk and identify new opportunities for growth and differentiation.

Structure

Governance with a "capital G" is a critical factor that simply cannot be overlooked. In a perfect world, every organization would have a system of governance driven by accountability, which distributes authority across self-organizing teams driven by a common purpose and passion. In fact, this resembles the structure that we see in young start-ups, where small, agile and accountable teams operate as "small sailboats" rather than one monolithic "corporate ship."

Embedding accountability into your organization's culture at the beginning is so important, and then ensuring continued structural alignment as your scale, is equally important. For larger and more established organizations, "fixing" culture after the fact is no easy feat. In fact, I might argue that it is impossible.

Talent

This so-called "workplace renaissance" is in large part driven by people -- the talent. Millennials claimed the largest percentage of the workforce in 2015 and have sparked a conversation about where, why, and how individuals and teams do their best work. These rapid adopters of digital, social, and mobile technologies, expect to use real-time social messaging apps and to have the option of working remotely and from anywhere. Organizations must take note, consider, and incorporate this into their own strategies accordingly.

There's no question that future success relies on getting the right mix of culture, structure, and people, today. The leaders and the leading enterprises of tomorrow are embracing all of this change with open arms, while also proactively putting the right checks and balances in place to better govern the business and manage risk. A sharper focus on organizational culture, structure, and talent is important, and will enable us all to collectively rise to performance.