These goals are about action and who takes the lead: whether it’s transforming today’s climate crisis into tomorrow’s sustainable world, today’s emerging technologies into tomorrow’s critical infrastructure, or today’s digital divide into tomorrow’s connected society.
What underlines all of these possibilities is resilience. Making progress is about leading in times of change and it is the organisations who can harness and embrace change, who find the opportunities in challenge, that can drive that better future for people and the planet.
Transforming with purpose
In the context of recent challenges in our economy and society, it is crucial for leaders to have a vision of the future and an understanding of where they are moving towards.
They should understand that when they see challenges coming down the track, their very existence demonstrates a perhaps under-appreciated resilience. In fact, the businesses operating today in many cases have not only survived, but thrived and found opportunity in the face of adversity.
As a community, leaders have the voice to deliver change, an advocacy role to benefit their people and their output, making it necessary to work with one another to establish shared priorities, and for employers to take into account the needs of their people to create momentum around a shared purpose.
Mission is a positive differentiator for businesses in a market where ethics are considered by consumers in the companies they buy from, making ESG policies a driver of profit. There is a need for organisations to build trust with all of their stakeholders, which requires a transparent and protective approach to handling their data.
Without this diversity of thought and abundance of skills, opportunities for scale and technology to drive economic growth more widely will be limited.
And while the pandemic led to significant digital transformation and technology adoption, meaning leaders could start or run their company from anywhere, it has also put data at increased risk due to more distributed and hybrid working ecosystems. As a result, organisations have been required to implement strong cybersecurity policies.
Successful fraud prevention requires greater regulation, with the public and private sector working in collaboration to develop an ecosystem that is secure but does not stifle innovation. Regtech is one industry that can deliver this, reducing paperwork and increasing digitisation that can drive growth while implementing more trusted regulatory processes.
However, you cannot put technology into a business where their manual systems and their data storage are not strong. There needs to be a baseline from which to deliver digital transformation and the right skillsets are needed to achieve this.
Investing in talent and inclusion
What this means is a further requirement for cross-sector collaboration in creating stronger, more frictionless talent pipelines for organisations to tap into and greater opportunities for people of all backgrounds. Without this diversity of thought and abundance of skills, opportunities for scale and technology to drive economic growth more widely will be limited.
One route to achieving this is for organisations to implement more significant long-term commitments to change, rather than less specific targets. For example, Dell Technologies’ moonshot goal to cultivate inclusion – by ensuring 50% of our global workforce and 40% of our global people leaders will be those who identify as women by 2030 – holds our organisation accountable.
We believe that working cultures today should be about outcomes, not hours
As part of our mission to equip women in the UK with digital skills, we’ve created STEMASPIRE, a mentoring programme designed to help keep more female STEM students on the path to technology careers. And we operate the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN), which empowers women founders and aspiring entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and their vision through the access to technology, expansion of their personal networks, learning and funding resources.
To bring the best talent into organisations, we have to think about whether our working models are fit for purpose, particularly in the context of the ‘Great Resignation’, which became particularly prominent in the second half of 2021 and has continued since. Some organisations have adopted a four-day working week or, like Dell Technologies, encourage a significant percentage of the workforce to work remotely at any one time and offer a choice about when, where and how they work. We believe that working cultures today should be about outcomes, not hours and that the future of the workplace should be about increasing productivity and well-being, while constantly evolving.
Fostering digital inclusion across the UK’s technology infrastructure will expand who and where we look to for talent. The pandemic was a moment where we catalysed partnerships to drive that inclusion, partnering with organisations including Asda, Code First Girls and Laptops For Kids to deliver resources and expertise to those unable to access the requisite technology. It was a response to an urgent challenge, but we must ensure that we continue to build these partnerships into the future, so that we can aim to achieve lasting change and digital inclusion for all.
A new era of innovation
Moments of challenge often lead to the emergence of great strides in innovation and industry. The financial crisis of 2007/08 led to the birth of fintech and a more technologically-driven way of delivering banking and financial services. The pandemic increased the opportunities of digital transformation and hybrid working. As we navigate further economic uncertainty, leaders should ask what comes next and how do they maximise this moment for the good of all?
For one, we should be looking to education and delivering skills that matter for the future. There remains a significant STEM skills gap with basic skills for the digital age, such as coding, now part of the national curriculum but facing low uptake from students and a lack of teachers to provide this education.
Progress has been made with Local Skills Improvement Plans, a recent UK Government initiative that directly interacts with small- and medium-sized enterprise to understand the exact skills they need and create training plans, providers and partnerships to deliver this in the community.
Recent and ongoing challenges of low growth and productivity in the UK, which lacks behind the rest of the G7 countries, present a further challenge to UK industry. But it also offers an opportunity to reset and for leaders to drive a green industrial policy, with technology at the heart.
They can also maximise the entrepreneurial spirit that has only become more widespread throughout the UK, with more than 800,000 businesses launched last year – a near 22% increase on two years earlier and a new record. The challenge is a similar increase in business ‘failures’ between 2020 and 2021.
What this means however, is an opportunity for ‘intrapreneurship’; organisations to take on entrepreneurial employees whose own businesses have not succeeded, to bring an innovative mindset to their organisation. Digital transformation has made this more important than ever before, opening opportunities for leaders to be more creative and change the very foundations of their businesses – to be more entrepreneurial.
Making Progress
It has been said we are living through an era of ‘dog years’, where we see seven years of transformation in each one. The world is changing at a faster pace than ever, driven by emerging technologies such as 5G, the Edge, AI and blockchain, with innovations like the Metaverse emerging and offering a new way to experience the world.
With these opportunities ahead, it is a moment for leaders to be collaborative, be fearless and invest in long-term strategies that will drive inclusion, innovation and sustainability. These are the goals that will help make organisations fit for the future and resilient against any challenges to come.
Visit the Making Progress website here for more Thought Leadership.
