Quantum Leadership: Transmuting Technology

Abstract

In a past era, alchemists believed they could magically transmute lead into valuable gold. Science has progressed a substantial distance since then and for decades nuclear and particle physicists could change various materials into gold. When considering technology, leaders are faced with a comparable challenge: How does one leverage technology to create unique organizational value? To manage emerging technologies effectively to create organizational value, managers will need to lead the producers and practitioners of technology effectively. In the age of global interdependence, organizations must abandon old outdated perspectives.

Technology is a force which drives itself. Organizations must adopt to emerging technology or risk being obsolete. Leveraging technology to create value involves more then circumferentially managing technology. To create value, leaders must encourage staff to transmute technology. The principles and practices of quantum leadership provide for this possibility. This chapter will irradiate why simply managing technology does not offer organizations the maximum value from technology. The reader will be introduced to the four core features of quantum leadership: duality, superposition, entanglement, and observation. With this groundwork, the principles and practices of this leadership perspective will be discussed in context of transmuting technology into unique organizational value. Which lens one uses to see which possibility becomes reality are exclusively in the eyes of the viewer. Using information systems technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G technology as the exemplars, readers can decide whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgement on using quantum leadership as the perspective to transmute technology into valuable organizational gold.

Citation

Piel, M.A., Johnson, K.K. and Putnam, K. (2019), "Quantum Leadership: Transmuting Technology", Gordon, P.A. and Overbey, J.A. (Ed.) Advances in the Technology of Managing People: Contemporary Issues in Business (The Changing Context of Managing People), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 173-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78973-073-920191015