The evolution in leadership as the collection of data becomes ever stronger and more reliable.

This point emerged in an EP forum last week and it raised a number of interesting topics for discussion.

Leadership is changing as all companies collect stronger data and rely less on gut feel decision making, and power of personality. It is becoming more about the development of a framework to free up productivity and talent, creating safe places where people can be less concerned about making mistakes as they too will have the data and information to make more accurate judgements.

Leaders today will need a different mentality to those of the past as it will be more about understanding information, making sound judgements and freeing up talent.

The challenge will be to ensure that data becomes too dominant so that it does stifle creativity. This has been the core debate surrounding the advancement of technology overall the years. It was once claimed, although there is no evidence of it being said, that Albert Einstein remarked that technology would “surpass our human interaction” and “create a generation of idiots”.

What he is known to have said though was “ It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.’ And this was over 70 years ago.

The counter argument is technology is allowing for a far fairer and more humane world to emerge plus stronger business leadership based off factual evidence. This has been good and it is gradually seeing the decline of management styles which have become outdated. All can think of moments when decisions have been more influenced by personality judgement than by a sound perspective of an issue.

However the test of leadership is to ensure that there is a balance between data collection, process and creativity. Before too many nod in agreement, the argument is that one of the major issues of the last twenty years is that many businesses have happily taken up the savings presented by tech advancement and increased the pressure on people. The easy illustration is the decline in P.As and many senior executives now working on their laptops and mobiles to answer emails over far longer days. There are many who argue that it has made execs more accountable and an equal number who argue that productivity and customer care has declined.

The challenge now is to consider how the customer and employee journey can be improved through tech advancement? Leaders will have more information, more evidence to make sound strategic decisions so the focus must be on ensuring stronger frameworks both internally and externally.

This will inevitably see a different leadership set emerge and lay the ground for a new era.

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