Technical solutions fail without a human foundation to install and sustain them. This paper focuses more on personal development and self-awareness than on providing a roadmap for the HR Department.
Typically, there is only one opportunity for significant reform. The real bottleneck isn’t what we adopt—are leaders at every level sufficiently developed to steward meaningful change?
Implementation requires a leadership development architecture built on demonstrated capability, rather than tenure, position, or titles.
This may require ‘roughing feathers’ by younger, eager team members taking the initiative to implement change, under guidance.
What does this mean?
The Core Principle: No manager should manage others until they’ve proven they can manage themselves. No one should manage managers until they’ve proven they can build and run functional teams. Each level requires demonstrated mastery before promotions can sustain progress.
Self-Management Certification – Before anyone leads others, they demonstrate:
- Consistent execution on commitments
- Emotional regulation under pressure
- Productive conflict resolution
- Accountability without blame-shifting
- Evidence-based decision-making habits
Team Leadership Certification – Before managing managers, they demonstrate:
- Developing others’ capabilities, not just extracting performance
- Creating psychological safety that enables honest feedback
- Making decisions that serve team outcomes over personal advancement
- Building systems, not dependencies on individual heroics
Manager of Managers Certification – Before leading multiple teams, they demonstrate:
- Pattern recognition across teams
- Resource allocation based on impact, not politics
- Protecting teams from organizational chaos while driving results
- Coaching managers through their own leadership challenges
(Note: Coaches are part of the success or failure; Mentors are not).
Corporate Reform Leadership – Once sufficiently proven the above, they demonstrate:
- Systems thinking across organizational boundaries, vendors through to customers, customer.
- Change management that brings people along rather than dragging them
- Building coalitions, not fiefdoms
- Sustainable transformation, not quarterly theater
- Understand the Industry Politics
The Radical Part: This approach serves as a roadmap for developing leadership. Many current leaders would fail their level’s certification. Org charts would need restructuring. However, it opens up a root issue: The reality is that we are often forced to promote people into leadership roles before they have developed the capacity to fulfill them, and then wonder why adoption and initiatives struggle.
What would you change in adopting technology, if you believe this is a core issue?
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