21 Insights from the 2018 Change & Transformation Conference

The Conference Board uses cookies to improve our website, enhance your experience, and deliver relevant messages and offers about our products. Detailed information on the use of cookies on this site is provided in our cookie policy. For more information on how The Conference Board collects and uses personal data, please visit our privacy policy. By continuing to use this Site or by clicking "OK", you consent to the use of cookies.

21 Insights from the 2018 Change & Transformation Conference

August 27, 2018 | Brief

“Can we think of the leader as a convener of people? I am realizing that we can’t do that if we don’t have a fundamental and unshakeable faith in people.”

Margaret Wheatley, American management consultant¹

A persistent complaint at companies is that while individuals—both employees and customers—are successfully navigating the shoals of technological change, many businesses are being held back by their own internal rules, regulations, and processes. In fact, failure to adapt and to transform smoothly is a frequent source of executive frustration and fatigue. It’s especially frustrating when a digital transformation seems well on its way to success but then loses momentum and fails to achieve its goals. The key is knowing how to change corporate culture so that it instills the behaviors that make transformation possible.

When 203 practitioners and experts met to talk about change and transformation, we took notes. Here are highlights:

The old style of top-down leadership is no longer effective in bringing about corporate transformation.

Most corporate executives were raised to believe the leader is the hero who has all the answers. But that leadership model no longer works in today’s fast-moving digital world where no one can possibly have all the answers. Instead, a more successful leader will play the role of host, a facilitator who brings together disparate opinions and talent.
Corporate culture needs to be more like a neural network than a ladder. On a ladder, ideas move up and decisions move down. But in a neural network, many nodes are connected, with no single individual being responsible for having all the answers.
A successful leader can harness the power of the entire organization by knowing how to ask the right questions instead of trying to figure out the right answer every time. As host, this leader brings people together and creates conversations that make