Transformational Leadership in the Smart Machine Age
I was excited to see an email from my alma mater, Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology, inviting me for a thought leadership summit. I knew I wanted to go, but I also knew I needed preparation.
This complimentary, invitation-only VIP partner event that is hosted by Dr. Saby Mitra, who was our faculty director when I finished my MBA in 2012. He is being joined Dr. Ed Hess, professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.
The topic has been set: Transformational Leadership in the Smart Machine Age for Next-Gen Executives. The topic promises to cover four elements:
- Leadership.
- Transformational Leadership.
- Smart Machine Age.
- So how can next-generation executives be transformational?
Leadership
We all know what leadership is. Leadership is the ability to inspire people so they get inspired step up and do something that none of their peers or people in their level has done to the betterment of the organization or the community or the whole organizational set up. These activities further inspire other people to step up and do something similar, which eventually spreads contagiously throughout the organization and the whole organization is transformed. The overall results prove that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Leaders help team members in a variety of ways, including:
- Training the team member in new areas & disciplines.
- Providing feedback that encourages correct behavior and reprimands wrong behavior.
- Helping each team member understand his or her strengths and weaknesses, and helps them leverage that knowledge to execute day to day tasks.
- Helping team members get a mentor, who will help strengthen areas of weakness.
- Serving team members in an altruistic fashion, to help each contribute fully.
Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on Feb 28, 2018.
Puga Sankara
Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com.
