Conquering Digital Overload: Leadership strategies that build engaging work cultures

Description

This book examines the impact of the digital deluge on employees and organizations and sets out the leadership actions needed to create a corporate culture fit for the digital age. In the digital world executives are presented with exponentially more information than their predecessors were a generation ago – and yet we’re not exponentially more productive. Why? Because we’re using twenty-first century technology with a twentieth century mindset. Excessive working hours, email overload and invasion of private life are all symptoms of a working culture that has used technology to simply amplify old management processes rather than enable and refine newer, more productive ones. Instead of liberating us, technology has created a digital overload, accentuating the problems of presenteeism, unreasonable deadlines and management demands. Organizations need to stop using technology to turn up the volume and start using it to change the channel. Written by a unique team of experts, this edited collection covers leadership, corporate culture, technology, wellness and workplace design. It argues that digital overload is a problem of corporate culture and a failure of leadership. As such it takes leadership to fix it. Leaders who have the courage to explore alternative ways of working with technology, the enlightenment to give employees more freedom and control over their own lives, and the humility to live and demonstrate the new culture personally. Those who do this have the power to transform their organizations so they can ride the digital wave rather than be swamped by it. Front Matter ....Pages i-xx Introduction: Digitalization and Why Leaders Need to Take It Seriously (Peter Vogel, Göran Hultin)....Pages 1-8 How Employees Are Impacted (Richard Savage, Michael Staunton)....Pages 9-24 Why it’s a Business Issue (Alain Haut, Peter Thomson)....Pages 25-37 Organizational Culture, and the Impact of the Digital Overload (Ben Emmens, Peter Thomson)....Pages 39-51 The Challenge of Technology (Cliff Dennett, Mike Johnson)....Pages 53-72 The Changing Human Experience of Work (Jim Ware, Susan Stucky)....Pages 73-87 Building an Engaging Organizational Culture: A Leadership Challenge (Peter Thomson, Ben Emmens)....Pages 89-100 Creating an Engaging Environment (Matthias Mölleney, Sunnie Groeneveld)....Pages 101-116 Wellbeing and the Workplace (Peter Thomson, Andrew Chadwick, Larissa Hämisegger)....Pages 117-126 Actions to Mitigate Digital Overload (Michael Staunton, Michael Devlin)....Pages 127-143 Technology-Based Solutions (Cliff Dennett, Mike Johnson)....Pages 145-157 Shifting Mindsets to Prepare for the Future (Susan Stucky, Jim Ware)....Pages 159-173 Back Matter ....Pages 175-192