Change Your Thinking

I watched my two-year old niece playing with a smart phone. She loves the photo gallery and is most fascinated by the ability to scroll through the album by swiping her finger. She calls out the name of the person in the photo as she scrolls away. She knows how to receive calls too, but her favorite is taking selfies. Entertaining children has significantly changed for this generation - we went out to the playground for entertainment, they get entertained by this small electronic gadgets.

Today we have what we call "throw-back Thursday" - a day of the week when we get nostalgic of the good ol' days. I capture here on this throw-back Thursday a post that I dedicate to my little niece and her generation. She may never relate to the things I will discuss here, but when she grows up she will realise life wasn't always as easy as it is in her generation. It's not just for my niece, it's also for you and me - I challenge you to question your leadership approach as you ingest the reflection on these gadgets. Does your leadership approach need to change?

Alarm Clocks

When I joined high school, an alarm clock was on my shopping list. Every term thereafter, batteries for the alarm clock were a permanent feature on my back-to-school shopping list. This was an important tool for success. You needed it to wake you up for morning preps. (I still wonder whose idea it was to create morning prep? Did it ever occur to them that some students study better at night than in the morning?) You had to set it to ring at a certain hour and switch it on before you retire to bed. It had an annoying ringtone - all the alarms in the dormitory had the same ringtone!

This gadget has been replaced by the smart phone. The flexibility of the alarm clock is incomparable. You can set the alarm clock to wake you up at different times on different days of the week. You can set more than one time for the alarm to go off. It gives you a range of ringtones to choose from and can add vibration mode to it! You can even snooze and present snooze minutes.

Calendars & Diaries

Every Christmas holiday, I recall my father coming home with calendars and diaries from different organisations. Some were his clients, others were suppliers. They had marketing materials printed in the giveaways. They wanted their brand to remain at the top of your mind the whole year round. I loved the themed photos that changed with each calendar month. It made for a great home décor piece!

I find myself continually declining calendar and diary offers today because the smart phone has changed that! Why do companies still print these instead of saving trees? On my phone, I can check what date it is today. I can scroll back to 2 years back or forward. I book my meetings on it and send invites to the meeting participants from it. I can share my calendar with friends and synchronise personal and office calendars. Even if I lose my smart phone, I can always download my calendar entries from the cloud onto my new phone. This was not possible with the good ol' calendars and diaries.

Reading Materials

I remember when I first walked into a library in campus. I was fascinated by the vast array of books and intimidated by the book coding system. You could only check on the shelf if the book you are seeking is available - at times I wasn't sure which library section the book would be. Then if I had to borrow it, there was a system of borrowing. They could only give it to me for two weeks and if I exceeded that, there was a surcharge applied! The magazines were outdated, newspapers tattered from being read by many people, but my worst experience was the frustration of not getting the book you want.

You want to get the latest copy of your favorite magazine or newspaper? The smart phone has an App that can help you with that! You pay an annual subscription and all you need is WiFi. There are Apps to buy books from such as the Kindle. You don't need to move from bookstore to bookstore looking for that book - just search for it on Kindle, purchase it online (it's cheaper and you save trees!) and read it on any gadget that you have synchronised to your account. Read it on your laptop, tablet or phone anywhere, anytime! I still miss the feel of flipping book pages, but the convenience of the smart gadgets is unmatched.

Cameras

We looked forward to Saturday afternoons back in high school. It wasn't just because we got to relax from the studying pressure, but this is when the local photographer came with his film camera. He snapped away as we took different poses and charged a hefty sum for each photo. You only got to receive your printed photo a week later. The photographer was a very powerful man - you only got your photo when he got it printed and after parting with cash!

Forget the film-strip camera - smart phones have changed it all! You can capture a memory as it happens - not just as a still photo, but even as a video clip. You can take a panorama view of that beautiful landscape. You don't need to miss out on the photo, just take a selfie with your friends! Edit the photos with an App, share them on email, or social media sites. You don't need to even worry about the storage space or arranging the photos in albums - you can upload them in a cloud and retrieve them from anywhere.

This article was inspired by a meme I received on my smart phone. It read "Maybe if we convince people that the brain is an App they will begin to use it". Smart phones shouldn't replace our thinking. Seeing this rapid change in the way we get things done on so many day-to-day tools makes me challenge whether we are ready for a change in how we think about leadership. We live in an era where you can work three jobs, run businesses and still keep your day job. Will an 8 to 5 job change into an on-demand assignment? Will concrete offices become obsolete? Will you need to go to class to gain knowledge or can you read upon it on the web?

We must change how we lead as we embrace millennials who have not experienced the old school alarm clocks, beautiful calendars, chaotic libraries or limiting cameras. They think differently, they see more efficient ways to get things done and they have a short attention span. We must get innovative in keeping them engaged. It is imperative to always keep in mind that there could be a better way of doing things. It doesn't mean we discard the old principles, those may not change much, but our approach must change. We must be receptive of new ways.

What do you need to change in your leadership style today?