Finance, ICT, and digital are all things that can help achieve those strategic goals. I’d agree it makes no sense to berate leaders – but the emergence of digital and its impact on how organisations work and people relate to each other is increasing in pace. You always needed Finance in an organisation – its just come to the fore with CEO’s in the last two decades – thats a slower burn than digital. I guess what i’m saying is absolutely grow digital support and trusted advisers – but don’t take as long about it!

In 2013, I think its more common for great leaders to know their strengths and say, “I depend on my FD to manage the books. My interests are in the bigger strategic goals, the vision and the customer relationship. Its no good asking me about the finances”.

So, here’s a digital taboo to break. It might be acceptable, then, for a CEO to say “its no good asking me about digital”.

In the Financial case, you would hope that if you scratch the surface, they might know more about the financial health of the organisation than they are letting on. But they don’t want to be drawn into a discussion where another member of the team has better expertise.

In the digital case, this may be a similar picture emerging.

So, the challenge is to grow digital support and trusted advisers. In my opinion, this is unlikely to be achieved by berating leaders for not being part of the digital vanguard.

In terms of the Q1 we really just need to get on with doing it. Hopefully the list in the first blog post is starting point but this should be combined with making sure our leaders and aspiring leaders are aware that this is an important aspect of what they need to know.

Q2 is as you say a moving target which will be informed by the skills in Q1 but not dominated by it. I think leadership is a really personal thing but that we can get a better match between leaders and organisations if we have a more engagement and discussion about what all this means

Only connect indeed!

And I’m keen, as someone who’s learning, that we avoid binary thinking – or, at least, implying (even if unintentionally) that the challenges are binary. The world is very often characterised by wicked issues or, if not wicked, then complex and it’s both intellectually lazy as well developmentally sub-optimal to think in either/or terms. Even thinking both/and is potentially limiting as we should admit many possibilities for the future.

So, whilst I am really motivated to get my head around how the balance and interaction of hierarchical and networked power/authority are changing and affecting – or should be affecting – how we lead, firstly I don’t see this as a shift from one to the other; leadership has been, and I believe always will be, about blended approaches. And I imagine the future will require of us more than just an understanding of, and response to the evolving dynamic between hierarchies and networks. There’s bound to be 3rd, 4th and 5th ways that need to be understood and assimilated into the leader’s mindset and toolkit.

What I wholeheartedly agree with is that leaders need to explore, understand and – if they are to be rounded and have longevity – deploy, singly and in combination, a broad suite of strategies and tactics that mean they have the potential to engage with all their communities/partners and all their staff and, crucially, empower them to likewise engage (by which I probably mean the full range of working together from informing to co-delivery to self-delivery in case you think I might be an”engage-only” Luddite).

The trendy sign off is “Only Connect”. Forster’s message is still relevant nearly a century later – what keeps changing is the repertoire for doing so.

Mark Rogers

I really like the ‘digital competencies’ (or whatever) and would just add a point about understanding what residents are already doing in this space.

Picking up Jonathan’s point about embedded and ‘hidden’ digitial leadership within organisations, civic leaders need to be aware that this is happening in their communities. Self-organising, digitally native, co-producing, networked groups of people are already leading. Ironically, the challenge for local leaders, is not always just to be following.

While not wishing to generalise (as at the very least a tech-savvy Mother-in-Law who was given an iPad by her self-organising, digitally native, co-producing, networked grandchildren for her 80th birthday, forbids me), I suspect that in many Councils, this is in part a generational thing, with older (not ‘old’, note) political and managerial leaders being less exposed and therefore aware of the issues you raise and arguments that you make.

We are making efforts to address this. One admittedly small, but important example being the proposed daily loan of iPads to delegates at the LGA Conference (thanks to Jonathan!).

Leaders need to access digicate skills, if leadership means listening to what’s going on around you, and shaping what’s going around you, within and beyond your organisation. Not just horizon scanning, but horizon tweaking!

Like you say, in the digital world, we do our thinking in public. So here’s a half formed thought that I’d value your views (and your readers views) on:

Just like in the analogue world, different people network differently. Just like they have different numeracy or literacy skills and aptitudes, they will have different digicate characteristics. Some, irrespecive of age and experience will not be digital naturals. This does not make them bad persons, or even bad leaders. I have seen some wonderful leaders who, with a very small but precisely chosen and honed network of trusted people, deliver some inspirational leadership. And some absolute time wasters who seem to know everything about everyone.

So don’t be too harsh on the conservatively digicate. You will find them amongst “old” leaders and amongst youths who are turning away from social media (my kids classes are full of ‘em). The rich tapestry of a good team will require differently literate, numerate and digicate people. Some emotionally intelligent leaders will simply know how to gather the digicate around them – and some will be the digital ambassadors themselves.

I’d love to run a Myers Briggs type indicator analysis on the Digital frontier pushing crowd. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator). My hypothesis is that we’d find we have an abundance of Extrovert-Sensing-Feeling-Judging, or a close variant of that in our ranks. Which doesn’t make us best, or right.

What do you think?

The thing that really struck me though was the idea of digital being behaviour as well as tech – this seems a really neat way of approaching digital issues – particularly given the reluctance of some to engage with the tech. I wonder if we should go a step further and just say that digital is a set of behaviours (and that the tech just supports them)? And whether ‘digital’ then becomes the wrong word although I am not sure what the right word is…

I came to this post from Carl’s blog

Some years ago in 1990 there was a great deal made of Emotional Intelligence and EQ perhaps replacing IQ ( Daniel Goleman ). Emotional literacy was cited as being very important when succeeding in business, life etc.

Perhaps we need someone to write about DQ and digital literacy / intelligence to inject these fresh ideas into a wider public consciousness.

I am not sure if we admire or value digital leaders enough ; we may be struck by their wealth and / or power but the titans of digital may not yet be seen a contributing to society at large. Personally, I think that many do, but how many digital leaders would make the ” Top 10 world impact makers ” of 1988 – 2013 in a poll.

In local government, there are c. 450 organisations in the UK. Will the better-at-digital ones go out of business quicker than the I-don’t-understand-digital ones ?

As we start to see local government entities running out of money, and facing insolvency, might they wonder what could have happened if they had shown digital leadership, and re-positioned their systems and business models ?

In many other sectors of the economy, digital is recognised as offering competitive advantage – cost, convenience and quality. I think these apply to all sectors.

On locking up data, organisations such as the Sunlight Foundation, and Open Knowledge Foundation are making determined steps to open up public sector data. For smaller communities wishing to use data, again there are efforts by digitally-skilled sections of civic society, and some list servers such as eCampaigning forum that seek to promote answers.

Alex