Build a rock-star C-Suite with Gartner’s six personas
Digital business has made a once linear marketplace, fast-paced and in constant change, making it difficult for stagnant leadership mindsets to remain competitive. Successful business tactics that worked in the past, will leave you in the dust today. To optimize a business strategy, one must be able to adapt quickly to change, and be aware of risks, opportunities, market changes and trends. Enterprises must demonstrate agility to strive in the current marketplace by balancing essential leadership roles throughout the C-Suite.
Letting go of past behaviors is difficult, but with digital business dictating the customer market, enterprise leaders have to “let it go.” Gartner’s recent research report “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business” forms the argument that C-Suite level executives must learn to adapt to new digital business, as new technologies are constantly disrupting industries and more and more companies become marginalized. The article warns leaders that using “mature” business practices will cause enterprises to miss out breakthrough opportunities.
Adapting to change is not easy, and rather than changing your leadership team, teams should instead self-assess, find strong traits, acknowledge weaknesses and promote to fill in the voids to create a rock-star, digitally-ready, executive team. As Gartner points out in this research, management behaviors should be complementary of one another, and these six personas will help fill in the gaps:
- Adventurer –the thrill seeker—the one that “enjoys adrenaline rush from a bold quest.” Leadership needs “brave” executives that will force their teams to face “the new competitive reality and calculated risks.”
- This persona is important because digital business is increasingly disruptive and the risk-reward involved with a bold attitude is suitable for today’s marketplace. Be bold, be brave and lead with innovation. Gartner says, “challenge the norm!”
- Ambassador – This persona is inclined to “finding common ground in adverse situations.” This C-suite leader will have “an artful balance of power and persuasion” for the overall good of the company’s mission and goal.
- Digital business “causes friction” and often times requires a person that can diffuse disruptive situations.
- Clarifier –Moving quickly, business competition can bring a lot of uncertainty. “[S]uccessful digital business leaders flip their mindsets from viewing uncertainty as a paralyzing force to seeing it as an opportunity.”
- This executive will draw clarity from experimentation and “fail-fast behaviors” and instead draw focus on execution competency and reward with target market analysis.
- Educator – The C-suite needs a leader with keen awareness of new technologies; that is tech savvy and astute to market trends, changes and disruption. Most importantly, this leader must be able to educate the C-suite of current business analysis of market conditions and help teams visualize new ideas and move business forward.
- Educators are finding ways of leveraging technology with enterprise solutions that can strengthen and align their business strategy to a digital business market.
- Attractor –the social butterfly –“Someone who is the natural hub of social networks and pulls others toward them.” Top-notch digital-business savvy talent is in short supply; and someone that couples deep industry analysis insight with likeability is rare.
- This trait is especially important when introducing new products, finding new business or expanding contracts; “the attractor” will find the sweet spots of business.
- Cartographer –Gartner describes this persona as someone who seeks to improve the understanding of context in order to navigate a business toward an optimum path.
- This person will navigate an enterprise through new paths, ensuring that the speed of product delivery is up to par with “new contours of digital business.”
In this research, Gartner makes a strong argument that by re-mastering leadership styles, with these six personas, your enterprise will be fit for the modern day challenges of digital business. Business competition and practices, specifically within the C-suite, have changed in the past five years forcing leaders, executives and VPs to readjust. People need to adapt to digital business no matter how successful previous tactics were. Fill in leadership gaps with a digital-business-ready executive team!
To read the full Gartner report you can register for free here: “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business”
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