Mike Walsh: The Key to Building a Successful Remote Organization? Data

Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh, leading futurist, shared his insight on the key to building a successful remote organisation in his recent Harvard Business Review article. Data has become even more important when teams are working remotely.

Here are a few highlights:

In this respect, distributed organizations are typically ahead of more traditional ones — where documentation can be sparse or buried in private email chains. “In theory,” explains Foster, “this means we should get better at making decisions over time because everyone can benefit from the organizational decision-making muscle.”

Notwithstanding the importance of agility and response time, as companies and teams become more digital, there is a corresponding need for leaders to be able to grasp the nuances and risks of data-driven thinking. At Culture Amp, Elzinga coaches his clients and employees on recognizing the limits of AI and other statistical models — especially when it comes to predicting human behavior, or making sensitive hiring and firing decisions. “The challenge for us as an industry and for HR in general,” he says, “is that we have to work not just on finding the answers, but also on data literacy.”

Data literacy is a hard-won skill. It does not come easily, even to a generation fluent with apps, emojis, and hashtags. To get there, organizations need to invest in dedicated training and education. At Mars, Dadlani was shocked when an email intended for his technology team inviting them to a course on machine learning accidentally went out to thousands of employees at the firm, and — much to his surprise — many of those unintended recipients showed up, which changed his thinking about how ready everyone in the organization was to take on the challenges of new technology.

Data will never be a substitute for genuine social interactions or company culture, but as we build more global, distributed, and virtual organizations, what it offers is something just as important: a common language for transformation.

Read the rest of the article here.

Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh is the CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing business for the 21st century. His expertise is giving leaders advise on how to thrive in this era of disruptive technological change. Mikes travels the world over 300 days a year, interviewing innovators, entrepreneurs and corporate revolutionaries to give his clients and audiences the freshest and best vision of tomorrow’s opportunities.

Mike has delivered close to a thousand keynote speeches to companies in almost every industry around the globe. In 2014, Mike was invited to be a main stage keynote speaker at the renowned Million Dollar Round Table where his customized presentation reached more than 8,000 people.

Aside from being a favored speaker to several global Fortune 500 companies, Mike is also a prolific writer. His international publications include articles in BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of the best-selling book FUTURETAINMENT (published by Phaidon and winner of the design award by the Art Director’s Club in New York) and The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas.

Mike was the founder of Jupiter Research (Australia), was a senior strategist at News Corporation (Asia Pacific Region). He is currently a board member and strategic investor in the North Alliance, Scandinavia’s leading digital marketing group.

Mike‘s keynotes are:

  • The Algorithmic Leader
  • Designing your business for the 21st century
  • Digital Transformation
  • Human-centric Innovation

Contact us if you would like to engage Mike Walsh to deliver webinars and workshops for your business.