Critical thinking in leadership and technology

Leadership & Technology

Critical Thinking: Leadership and Technology

For any new technological process, system or procedural change to the effective in any organization there must be a compete commitment on the part of senior executives to their success. Employees, managers, associates inside any organization and suppliers, partners and channel partners outside the organization all look to the CEO and senior management team to show strong commitment to the systems, process or procedural change any new it system requires (Gilley, Gilley, McMillan, 2009). In Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems implementations for example the greatest single determinant of a successful change management program put into place in conjunction with the actual system being installed is the CEO's willingness to set an example both in terms of commitment to the change in addition to the system itself (Shum, Bove, Auh, 2008). Resistance to change is the single greatest factor in the failure of process- and systemic-related strategies in companies (Gilley, Gilley, McMillan, 2009). This has only been exacerbated by the global recession of the last twelve months as of March, 2009. CEOs, senior managers and leaders in companies cannot afford to be only focused on technologies and be immersed in technocracy as a result; they must be focused on the unmet needs in their organizations that are the catalysts driving change to systems, processes, and procedures. For leaders that suffer from being too immersed in the technology at the expense of seeing the critical need for being more focused on process-related and people-specific needs in their organizations, overwhelming research shows that these leaders must change to be process- and people-sensitive first (Gilley, Gilley, McMillan, 2009). All the research completed on how to attain lasting, permanent change in any organization is predicated on first concentrating on how to share ownership of the change, no matter how large or small, with those associates most affected by it. Second, there is the critical need for any CEO and his staff to be entirely immersed in the change management programs and strategies of the proposed system, process or procedure for them to succeed (Aguirre, Calderone, Jones, 2004). Third, the introduction of technologies must be specifically designed to allow for process improvement over time, not introduced merely for the convenience of automation but to significantly increase performance of the entire company's processes over time. Only when a company takes on these specific steps will they be successful.