Page 39 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2015394. New leadership for innovation and entrepreneurshipTo compete is this new highly competitive and globalised environment where new customers choose to define themselves as active members, digitally proficient and connected in the com- mercial relationship: we must constantly pursue:1. Excellent knowledge of customers.2. An innovative customer service.3. An extraordinary customer experience, co-designed with them.4. Greater flexibility, connection and transpar- ency of companies.5. Employees with more training in the new digital professions and more empowered.And, naturally, exercising new leadership with:• Vision.• Greater proximity.• Transparency.• Enhancers and boosters of relations, conversation and collaboration to encourage everyone in the organisation to contribute.Irrespective of the different positions in a startup, there are a number of competencies common to all professionals in the digitaleconomy, which characterise above all whatleaders of twenty-first-century companiesshould be like:• Ability to learn continuously, in order to process knowledge constantly, fit together data and information from very different environments and address new challenges. With a knowledge of new technologies.• Humility and a sense of belonging, being capable of backing down and accepting others’ ideas if they are better; without humility it is not possible to learn.• Passionate attitude, discussing everything but also capable of changing with new data.• Teamwork and collaborative capability, which is much more effective than futile individual efforts.• Communicative capabilities, in addition to languages; especially English.• Open to innovation and questioning what is established.• Leading a group of people to solve a problem, and being capable of handing over power if they lag behind.The five keys to open leadership are: humility, connexion, flexibility, innovation and a continuous learning capability.Joana Sánchez