organisational coach or an operational enthusiast … BE A CHAMPION!
Thought Leaders
Apart from Champions, we also need more Thought Leaders. I think sometimes people expect our ‘thought leaders’ to be exceptionally brilliant people who amaze the world\industry with creative and original ideas …
Far be it for me to say that this isn’t true for some luminary colleagues; however, I reckon that most thought leaders do not necessarily have all their original thoughts themselves. Instead they observe their environment, the community they operate in and collect individual challenges, opportunities,
thoughts and solutions. They engage and interact with the community to gather and this information and proliferate, expand, share it in a novel & structured way that is recognised as ‘leading the way’.
It reminds me of the ‘Dancing Guy’ video from Derek Shivers YOUTUBE VIDEO whereby the ‘lone nut’ is the person with the original idea but indeed is only a lone nut, until the ‘first followers’ validate the idea
and start the movement. Thought Leaders are these first followers who recognise and validate the potential of new ideas.
And with this comes the concept that ‘Continual Service Improvement’ is at the heart of any (service management) operating model and culture. We need to question the status quo, we need to judiciously apply new practices and methods and constantly measure the value of our outcomes.
Thus, if thought leaders do not need to be exceptional thinkers, and we all need to be thinking about bigger and better ways of operating … BE A THOUGHT LEADER!
Why do we need Champion Thought Leaders?
Now, all of the above has been true for some time, but I think that in this current day and age it is even more important to have Champion Thought Leaders. First and foremost, as Service Management is a community that is fed by individuals contributing to the collective wisdom (as well as organisations, commercial or otherwise). the more people that contribute, the larger the collective wisdom available to the community is.
I can see three current developments that increase the need for Champion Thought Leaders today:
1. Relevance
Unfortunately, a reality is that the field of traditional service management is losing its relevance. Not so much in real terms (as in contributing to business outcomes and value) but in terms of the attention it gets
(from the business, management but also prospective staff). It is just not ‘sexy’, and definitely not when compared to agile practices or artificially intelligent technology!
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