Leadership in the Age of Personalization

Book excerpt: Society is more diverse than ever. People are more informed than ever. As employees and as consumers, people are aware of and proud of their individuality. They want to influence the workplace and the marketplace in their own way. Welcome to the age of personalization.Most leaders were trained in the age of standardization - an age when the business defined the individual, when bosses told people what to do inside the box they were given, when progress toward the company mission is what mattered and was measured, when it seemed necessary to protect functions and work within silos. Those methods don't work in the age of personalization, an age in which the individual defines the business. To thrive today, leaders must know how to elevate and activate individual capacities. Leaders must know how to measure and amplify individual impact. Leaders must value and seek interdependence across the enterprise. These are new skills for a new age. Corporate and leadership strategies were not designed to handle mass variance in people. The old way is not just ineffective, it is toxic to organizational culture. Leaders know it's time to evolve. They just don't know what they should be evolving to. We still need standardization, but the age of personalization is forcing us to rethink what those standards are so we can better lead our employees and serve our customers. Without this mindset, we can't reclaim sustainable, organic growth.This book shows leaders and organizations how to let go of the elements of standardization that hold back growth and evolve the rest to define new metrics for the standardization of "me." This evolution is essential as personalization forces us to reinvent the ways we think, work and lead.