Rethinking leadership in the digital age 

For many business leaders, the playbook that brought them success a decade ago no longer applies.

Everything’s in motion. One minute your customers are with you. The next, they’ve moved on and what they expect has changed completely, with new players appearing who do things differently.  

Technology that once felt like a bold investment has quickly become part of the everyday fabric of doing business. Today, the most effective leaders are the ones willing to loosen the grip they have on control.

Right now, effective leadership looks less like giving orders and asserting control, and more like setting direction and backing people to act quickly when it counts. This allows us to keep pace with the speed of change.

Organisations can no longer afford to spend years planning the perfect strategy: the digital landscape is shifting too fast.

Bayer saw this first hand. Faced with over 100,000 internal rules slowing everything down, they stripped out layers of red tape and allowed the teams closest to the work to make 95% of the decisions. It gave teams more control, and cut through delays (WSJ, 2024).  

Leaders who lean too heavily on instinct or past playbooks can end up missing clear signals of change - unexpected signals that something’s shifted. This shift runs deeper than tech. It’s reshaping expectations - from how people define good leadership to what it takes for them to feel supported and willing to stick around.  

Teams now expect to be trusted and not micromanaged, and customers are drawn to services that feel effortless and personalised. Meanwhile, new players are entering the market with fewer constraints, moving quickly without the baggage of outdated systems.

Adaptable leaders recognise that uncertainty is the norm, not the exception. They create environments where people can act without second-guessing and adjust as they go. 

Unilever, for example, rethought how leadership worked across the business by bringing in more agile ways of working. Leaders took on coaching roles, while teams were trusted to try things out locally and build on what worked. It made it easier to develop and improve products at speed, and to stay in step with what customers wanted (BCG, 2023).

Leaders do not have all the answers, and are at their best when they empower others to take initiative. This could be as simple as decentralising decision-making, or as strategic as building cross-functional teams around a specific outcome rather than a department.

Digital leadership means building something that can hold its direction even when conditions change. That means investing in digital skills, but also in people and structures that support resilience.

Leaders might start by asking:

• Are we rewarding experimentation, or only celebrating success?
• Do our teams have the autonomy to act on what they learn?  
• Is the organisation structured to encourage collaboration across silos, rather than reinforce them?
• How can we build a more resilient culture in which everyone plays a key role?

The bottom line

The leaders making real progress today aren’t the loudest in the room. They’re the ones enabling change behind the scenes, rewiring their organisations to meet what’s coming next. It’s all about remaining responsive.

Footnotes

1. WSJ, 2024
   
   
2. BCG, 2023
   
   
3. OnWave, 2024