The Need for Culture Neutrality

Digital technologies aren’t just strengthening customer relationships, reducing costs, and creating competitive advantage. They are changing how we organize work, and thus, how executives must lead.

And while unprecedented technological change might appear to present unprecedented challenges for leaders, that is not entirely the case. Similar technology-driven revolutions occurred twice in the 20th century, and each provides important lessons for leaders.

The first occurred in the 1910s, when American businesses adopted workflow analysis technologies such as time and motion studies and Gantt charts. These tools sharply restricted the breadth of individual jobs and created functional departments with hard boundaries. Harsh boss-knows-best leaders, who prescribed work in excruciating detail, inevitably arose.

The second occurred in the 1980s, when the Japanese challenged these CEO-centric practices. Japanese companies deployed quality technologies (like statistical process control) that made them competitive enough to bankrupt reputable American companies; for example, American Motors Corp.’s demise in 1987 reduced the auto industry’s “Big Four” to the “Big Three.” American executives didn’t oppose the new technologies so much as they resisted the organizational and leadership changes they required, including cross-functional teams and empowered subordinates

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In the age of America first, India needs to move the back office forward