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5G: WHAT AWAITS THE LEADER?

By Richard Citrin and Michael Couch, Contributing Writers

OH BOY, if a trade journal has to offer answers to its readers who are presumably digitally advanced, what are the rest of us supposed to do and more importantly, what should you as a leader be asking about so that you can help yourself and your organization understand the opportunities and challenges that await us with this new technology.


In his book, Trusting Technology,Graham Binks talks about the often time failed promises of technology or at least the expectations that we put on technology.

Gartner’s Hype Curve tells us that “peak inflated expectations” lead to a great hope of what new technology will bring which is quickly followed by a “trough of disillusionment” where we realize it may not be as great as we hope, which eventually leads to a finding a productive balance. 

Garner's Hype Curve

You may be a technology leader who will be looking at how 5G will increase the range of offerings that you can provide for your company whether that it’s related to IoT, autonomous vehicles or augmented reality. You may be reading this article as a strategic leader who is excited about getting faster and fuller reports from your sales field team or in how your health care organization will be able to provide expanded telemedicine services.


Regardless, part of your job as a leader is to make certain that you balance the reality of 5G with the hype that will be coming down the pike. No doubt, by this time next year, Apple will be releasing cellphone with 5G capacity, but the networks they will be working on will not be fully built out. The inevitable question will be posed around “when will we be upgrading our systems to 5G?”

The skills of managing hype are not easy to master as we all want to jump on the bandwagon and become supporters of the newest and best. But some of us are early adopters, some of us are mainstream adopters and some of us are laggards and there are advantages to each. “The early bird catches the worm ” but “Pioneers get shot; settlers get land.”

One skill that would certainly seem to be appropriate for any leader to strengthen during the roll-out of a new technology would be “Managing Ambiguity.” 5G is certainly a technology that is coming quickly but as is indicated in Digital Trends, even experts are clear about its potential but not its reality. Aligned with this notion is the research that 90% of what managers deal with in their work has some level of ambiguity and uncertainty and that new technology, despite our having faced it time and again, is always disruptive.


Our brains like certainty and the introduction of new technology is disruptive to that peace and calmness, so what can we do to address our need to fi nd the patterns of assurance that will help us find the balance that we as leaders will need to do to make sure that 5G works for the growth of our business and industry. Here are 3 things you can do to build your Managing with Ambiguity Muscle:

  • Forget about the technology: As the hype about 5G grows this year, effective managers will want to focus on the business propositions that will drive the next level of business support. As we say in our book, Strategy-Driven Leadership, it’s all about the strategy of the business as the starting point. The technology will take care of itself, but you do not want to build your projects around the technology.
  • Think big but act small: 5G will probably provide an amazing new platform for growth, but it will only happen incrementally for your business. If your work interfaces with 5G what can you begin to do now that will help you and your team to begin to understand 5G capability, begin to see what your vendors and colleagues are thinking about its potential in your business and whether your company has the (excuse the pun) bandwidth to effectively use this offering as a pioneer or to wait until it becomes more mainstream.
  • Define Progress: Managing ambiguity is about recognizing what you do know and what you don’t know, and as the expression goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Some projects will move ahead at a predictable pace while others may have fits of starts and pauses. You may find your firm putting project teams in place to address some of the issues with a goal of just helping everyone to better understand the opportunity. There is a natural order to how things get done in your fi rm and while you shouldn’t be afraid to rock the boat, you may not want to tip it over.

5G will be here sooner than we all think, and it may be yet another revolution in our digital transformation. Effective leaders, however, will understand the challenges to change and will embrace them so that others can create the success of this new technology.