Four organisational aspects most affected by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) economic situation are customer expectations, product and service enhancement, collaborative innovation, and organisational forms.
In the complex Industry 4.0, organisations prefer to collaborate with inter-organisational partners in virtual networks, while focusing on their core business and competencies while the partners perform non-core tasks.
Industry 4.0 brings major organisational transformation and change led by leaders who are super-transformational and open to collaboration. In modifying mindsets to the Industry 4.0 dispensation, staff become skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring new knowledge and insights. Employees and partner resources operate in high-performance teams where good communication and information flow flourish.
Behavioural change affecting mindsets is crucial for success. This results in bureaucratic silo-structured firms transforming toward becoming cross-functionally shaped virtual dynamic learning organisations with a performance-oriented culture.
Collaborative leadership role-modelling encourages positive perceptions about the ability of leaders to create an organisational climate conducive to high motivation. Innovation, extremely important in Industry 4.0, is the perception that change and creativity are encouraged, including prudent risk-taking into new areas. The innovation dimension relates to the concept of leaders encouraging team members to apply their creativity in the work situation. It relates to the Total Quality Management concept of empowerment and involvement of team members as influenced by leadership.
Mining companies must accept that collaborative innovation is only performed successfully where a trustworthy supportive climate prevails while utilising cohesive virtual teams of partners in cross-functional organisational forms who enjoy substantial autonomy. Moreover, collaborative innovation is directly linked to innovative product and service design and development to satisfy customer expectations.
Hence, all the above elements relate to highly profound collaborative leadership traits to possess in the Industry 4.0 environment.
Collaborative leadership flourishes in open innovation ecosystems where modern business models and organisational forms prevail. Collaborative leaders are super-transformational with respect to behavioural, technical and structural strategy. Key enabling technologies – inter alia artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and robotics – largely influence the design of production processes constituting Industry 4.0 organisational forms that need to be programme-managed. Hence, a key success factor is for collaborating leaders to possess sound project- and programme management acumen, while intellectually stimulating virtual teams of own and partner members to conform to this phenomenon.
With respect to customer expectations, project and programme management acumen delivers a crucial customer focus. Regarding product enhancement, project and programme management acumen delivers innovative continuous improvement. Moreover, regarding collaborative innovation, it delivers a dynamic agile learning mindset and the matrix methodology to lead, manage and govern the cross-functional processes of new organisational forms.
Hence, it is patently clear that project and programme management acumen is the catalyst for organisational success in the Industry 4.0 economy.
In conclusion, it can be argued that to achieve top performance and competitivity in Industry 4.0, superior strategic collaborative leadership should display all the characteristics alluded to above. It constitutes the ultimate talents modern-day organisations, including mining firms, should employ.
Moreover, innovative governance and creative organisational structures and mindsets led by collaborative leadership must be combined with virtual networks of partner organisations to ensure success.
Professor Pieter Steyn
Principal