Gaye Clemson is the founder and Managing Director of Globalinkage, a consultancy focused on using cross-functional team empowerment, Attentive Leadership© and Agile Strategy Execution operating models to enable effective transformational culture change. Having been around the Information Technology (IT) industry since the early 1980s, including 8 years at Tandem Computers during its formative years, Clemson has seen digital transformation and the people changes it brings ‘up close and personal’. As a thought leader on the people side of transformational and culture change, she speaks frequently at national and industry conferences including leading a Master Class in 2020 on a new leadership mindset for the Association of Strategic Planning. She is the published author of Agile Strategy Execution – Revolutionizing the HOW! (2016); Tandem Computers Unplugged – A People’s History (2012) as well as multiple LinkedIn articles on a wide range of transformational change related topics. In her free time she researches and writes oral history narratives on the human history of Ontario, Canada’s world famous Algonquin Park. In this same vein, she has recently launched a new podcast entitled Algonquin Defining Moments.
Years ago I was hired by Tandem Computers to join, and a few months later, run the Tandem Executive Institute. Though primarily a marketing program, the goal of TEI was to bring together the best ‘movers and shakers’ of academia, the consulting world, customer senior IT leaders, and senior…
My recent change consulting work has taken me to the mergers and acquisitions world. Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine a greater transformational change for team leaders than getting acquired by an industry giant.
In my role as an orchestrator helping cross-functional team leaders enable transformational change, it’s been interesting to reflect on how often the topic of complexity comes up. And yet, when I ask ‘Tell me how you are defining complexity?
Just the other day I saw a commercial on one of the cable news outlets promoting Cisco’s newly launched Webex Suite that is, according to the ad, tailor-made for hybrid working. It caught my eye because I once had an opportunity in 1976 to hang out with the McLaren racing team. I was the guest of a fellow student, who was a Formula One freelance journalist. I was intrigued to discover in 2021 that the McLaren Racing Team was still a major player in the Formula One world. I know, I know, some of you are now asking yourselves, where has she been!
It’s refreshing to me to occasionally see honest viewpoints expressed on LinkedIn regarding the various stresses people feel in their day-to-day work lives. Regardless of its actual existence pre-COVID, work/life balance is officially over, replaced by a blending of work and home culture. And, the norms for what’s acceptable behavior at work have changed dramatically. Remember the days when we thought a barking dog or an interruptive child was a career-limiting move?
Those who know me know that I am obsessed with experimenting with new digital collaboration platforms and technologies. These days I’m especially intrigued with those that can help build trust, reduce loneliness and strengthen social connectivity; and, in so doing improve employee engagement, cross-functional collaboration, and organizational culture health. These topics are on everyone’s minds as companies envision much more remote or hybrid remote work becoming much more permanent due to the pandemic.