Adobe CQ presents: Making the modern leader
Leaders who not only challenge the status quo but also inspire their teams to do the same are changing the game for their organizations and industries — especially during this unprecedented time. These leaders prioritise creativity, insight, innovation, and collaboration. They look for new ways to connect the dots, make connections, and find new solutions for old and novel problems.
Perhaps the best way to understand them is to meet them. This is why we’ve reached out to enterprise leaders from across APAC who are pushing the boundaries across five key areas of leadership where creativity impacts business success: culture, data, skills, technology, and experience.
Tune in to our series of LinkedIn Live episodes, where digital leaders including HDFC Bank CMO Ravi Santhanam, Tata CLiQ chief product and customer officer Dharmarajan K, and Rosewood Hotel Group CIO Micah Friedman share their high-level insights.
Here is the lineup.
Episode 1 – License to fail: Fostering culture from a distance
Forty percent of organisation leaders excel in driving a creative culture., according to our research.
Leaders with a high Adobe creativity quotient (CQ) – which represents their creative potential to lead – prioritise, recognise, and celebrate innovative thinking. They also seek out problems to solve and encourage experimentation.
In fact, the greatest area of opportunity for leaders is leaning into a “fail fast” culture. This means embracing “mistakes” and viewing “failures” as lessons learnt. Taking that approach is difficult under everyday circumstances. So how can leaders provide that environment amid a mostly remote workforce and social distancing?
The episode features Ravi Santhanam, CMO of HDFC Bank, and Duncan Egan, vice president of marketing for Adobe APAC, who will share how creative culture shapes their organisations and how they are continuing to foster it during a pandemic.
Episode 2 – Redefining data: Has your approach changed with the times?
Thirty-five percent of organisation leaders excel in utilising data to drive creativity, Adobe CQ research finds.
Leaders with a high CQ place data collection and the insights drawn from it at the core of their creative process. They see creativity as an art and science, and use data for decisioning and to quantify success.
The big opportunity for leaders is to build data collection and feedback into their everyday business operations. Rather than relying on status updates and reports with pages of data, it’s about finding or developing a key set of creative criteria that define progress and success, and then building it into the organisation at all levels.
This episode will also feature Tata CLiQ’s Dharmarajan K, along with Sunder Madakshira, head marketing at Adobe India. The executives will share how creative use of data has helped them successfully build experience-driven businesses, and why the pandemic has made it important for them to rethink and evolve their approach to data collection and feedback.
Episode 3 – The skills for creative leaders of tomorrow
The same research from above found that just 26 percent of organisation leaders excel in fostering their teams’ creative skills.
Leaders with a high CQ recognise creativity goes beyond art and design outputs and see it as a set of uniquely human skills – relationships, insights, and the ability to solve problems. They foster entrepreneurial skills and embody collaboration and innovation.
But there must be more. Now is the time for leaders to expand their ideas of what creative skills are. Design-thinking skills are becoming more developed, but leaders need to push their own thinking beyond theory and lean into building entrepreneurial skills.
The episode will feature Micah Friedman, chief information officer at Rosewood Hotel Group, and Yew Hwee Ng, managing director for Adobe Greater China. They will share their thoughts on the value of nurturing and retaining the right set of creative skills within the organisation, and how this is a key element in delivering better guest experiences.
Episode 4 – Customer experience is everyone’s job
Delivering creative, engaging customer experiences is more critical now than ever before. Forty-three percent of APAC leaders excel in delivering innovative experiences.
Those with a high Adobe CQ are confident and proficient in connecting data, technology, and skills to create experiences that resonate with customers.
As customer expectations continue to grow, the organizations that thrive in the post-pandemic world will be led by those who can foster cross-team collaboration to continually push their customer experience forward.
The episode features Johanna Lowe, director of marketing and communications at University of Sydney, and Suzanne Steele, managing director of Adobe Australia and New Zealand. They explore the importance for leaders to bring together diverse opinions and skills to deliver customer experiences that engage and excite, and where customer experience trends are heading in the future.
Episode 5 – Creativity through technology
Technology is an enabler of human skills, yet just 37% of APAC leaders excel in leveraging technology to power their team’s creativity.
High Adobe CQ leaders embrace creative innovations themselves and push their teams to explore new tech to incorporate into their creative and business processes. They view tech not as a job function but as a facilitator to augment and inspire creative innovation.
The challenge for leaders is having a strong grasp on new technology in order to push their teams’ creativity forward. How can organization leaders better marry up technology and team capabilities to drive greater collaboration, innovation and problem solving?
The episode will feature Prue Cox, director of marketing solutions at LinkedIn, and Simon Dale, managing director of Adobe Southeast Asia. They will explore why implementing innovative technologies is increasingly important for organizations, and how leaders can maintain a strong understanding of new technology, even when they aren’t directly involved in the day-to-day activity.