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A Leadership Map for the Future
"…Keeping up, staying up and getting ahead are now
more difficult than we have previously imagined. There is no turning
back, but there is turning forward."
Mike Jay, www.emergenics.com.
Predictions for the future can be stimulating and challenging,
especially if one is a top executive in a business enterprise attempting
to make strategic decisions. Our rapidly changing global environment
presents problems never before encountered. No one knows what will
be required of leaders in the future, but some speculation is worthy
of our attention.
Predictions from experts in their fields have not always been
accurate. Here are a few examples:
• In 1899 the U.S. Commissioner of Patents,
Charles Duell, declared, "Everything
that can be invented has been invented."
• In 1905, President Grover Cleveland prophesied, "Sensible
and responsible women do not want to vote."
• When Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, wrote a student paper proposing
an overnight delivery service, his professor wrote: "The concept
is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than
a ‘C,' the idea must be feasible."
• Even Bill Gates once mused, "640K of memory ought to
be enough for anybody."
New industries are in their gestational phases.
Some are already well on their way to becoming established products
and services.
• Micro-robotics – miniature
robots built from atomic particles that could unclog arteries
• Machine translation – devices that will provide real-time
translation between people conversing in different languages
• Digital highways that will make available to any home instant
access to knowledge and entertainment
• Urban underground automated distribution systems to reduce traffic
congestion
• Virtual meeting rooms to eliminate business travel
• Bio-mimetic materials that will duplicate properties found in
living organisms
• Satellite-based personal communicators that will allow instant
communication to anyone anywhere in the world
• Machines capable of emotions, inference, and learning that will
interact with human beings in entirely new ways
• Bioremediation – custom-designed organisms that will
help clean up the earth's environment
Each of these opportunities is by nature global, with no single
nation or region likely to control all the technologies and skills
required to turn them into reality. Any
firm wishing to become a leader will have to collaborate with and
learn from leading-edge customers, technology providers, and suppliers
wherever they are located (Hamel & Prahalad, Competing for
the Future , 1994).
How Will Future Leaders Be Successful?
The
question remains – no matter what the product or services – how
will business be conducted in the future and what will be required
for leaders to succeed?
To be sure, some leadership qualities will always be important:
intelligence (emotional as well as cognitive), confidence, ability
to articulate and inspire a vision, ability to motivate, unfaltering
optimism, perseverance, resilience, and strategic decision making.
Recent company bankruptcies have also shown that leaders need
to have moral and ethical values to make difficult and even unpopular
decisions that are beneficial to stakeholders in the long term.
The Impact of Technology
Technological advances are not only speeding
up communications, but also enabling rapid input from customers,
suppliers, employees and all stakeholders. Technology itself has
created new challenges for leaders and for all knowledge workers
wishing to succeed in their roles.
While technological advances can save considerable time and money,
here are some of the challenges that they have created for us.
| 1. |
Learning
new technical skills : Executives must continually update their
skills and remain open to learning how to work with new hardware
and software systems. It is no longer sufficient to depend
on technical specialists. What were considered basic computer
skills in the past are no longer good enough. Leaders must
know how to use new devices and programs to their best advantage.
This requires constant learning and keeping an open mind. What
worked in the past won't work in the future. |
| 2. |
Decision-making on
technical issues : Leaders must be able to make decisions about
which technological advances have importance for their organizations,
which purchases to make and where to allocate resources. Without
this capacity to judge the value of technical advances, they
risk spending money in the wrong places. |
| 3. |
Managing time and information
: All persons, but especially leaders, will have to manage
their time and information flow more efficiently, in order
to be able to respond effectively and in a timely manner to
new input from stakeholders. It does no good to have client
input available if the organization's system cannot handle
the information and respond to customer demands, complaints
and requests. It does no good to have email availability among
workers and managers if no one reads and responds to emails
in a timely fashion. Time is not the issue here, knowledge
systems and time management are. |
| 4. |
Leading virtually :
Greater capacity for instant communications opens possibilities
for working with suppliers in foreign countries at lower prices
than can be achieved domestically. Leaders must be able to
support and coordinate virtual work teams. Working virtually
is not the same as managing in person, and requires new skills.
Expect to see increased use of virtual conferencing technologies. |
| 5. |
Leading diverse cultures
: Working with an expanded global environment brings challenges
of communicating effectively with different cultures. In the
future, leaders will be required to have unique abilities to
inspire and motivate others with different perspectives, values,
cultures, and religions, as well as multi-generational age
groups. |
| 6. |
People development
: Leaders will have to be adept at bringing out the best in
their people, who have more decision-making responsibility
with customers and stakeholders in a rapid response environment.
Leaders will be required to learn and use effective coaching
skills. |
Communicating across multi-cultural and multi-generational communities
is becoming more important as a competency for leaders in the future.
A lot more of managing and leading will have to be done virtually.
Only a few of the prominent business schools have begun to teach
new and future leaders how to manage diverse cultures in a virtual
environment. Yet this is a clearly emerging competency.
Even smaller companies will become global and be required to work
in a global environment . Expect to see an increase in diversity
issues arise in leadership development programs. The use of executive
coaches is expected to gain priority as a primary tool for developing
diversity competencies for leaders.
Dissolving Boundaries
Leadership, when simply defined, is all about bringing people
together to make something happen. Effective leaders galvanize
attention and get people moving forward together. However, organizations
are increasingly complex. The past is no longer a map for how to
do business in the future.
Leaders of the future must have an increased ability to be flexible,
and open to learning. They must be able to manage the tension created
by diversity and differing perspectives. They must be able to coordinate
and reach consensus, while keeping the focus on common goals and
values.
The global nature of business means improving
our abilities to work and lead across diverse cultures. Leaders
must understand the different legal, political, religious, gender
and generational perspectives in different regions and countries.
How do their organization's products and services impact the people
in the areas where they are doing business? Are the organization's
employees and executives able to respond to differing needs in
a flexible and rapid manner? Can leaders manage the tension that
is inherent in multi-cultural environments?
For many organizations having difficulty managing cultural diversity
within their own domestic offices, it will be even more challenging
to meet global demands. Flexible leaders who are capable of managing
diverse groups of people both domestically and throughout the world
will have the competitive edge.
Alliances, partnerships, mergers, and outsourcing have all changed
the way we do business. Industry boundaries are blurring. Team
boundaries must be fluid in order to share information and enable
better decision-making. Leaders who are adept at building relationships
and leveraging partnerships will have a competitive advantage for
the future. The ability to guide diverse groups to consensus by
focusing on common purpose and core values will be a highly prized
competency.
Five Priorities for the Future
In Global Leadership: the Next Generation
( Goldsmith, M., Greenberg, C. L., Robertson, A. & Hu-Chan,
M.; FT Prentice Hall, 2003), more than 200 executives were selected
for their high potential for future leadership from 120 international
companies. The results reveal five key competencies for leaders
in the future:
| 1. |
Thinking
globally: Leaders will need
to understand the economic, cultural, legal and political environments
in which they do business. New skills and knowledge for marketing,
sales and international production will be required. A global
perspective is a high priority. |
| 2. |
Appreciating
cultural diversity: This competency requires more flexibility
and openness than ever before. Cultural tension is a natural
by-product of the global business environment and leaders will
have to be adept at managing it. The ability to lead disparate
groups of knowledge workers to a consensus will be crucial. |
| 3. |
Developing technological
savvy: Information and communications systems are the backbone
of the global enterprise. While CEO's may not be technological
experts they must make decisions about which advances to adopt
and how to allocate technological investments wisely. |
| 4. |
Building partnerships
and alliances: As a result of all the reengineering, restructuring
and downsizing, many activities are being outsourced. This
requires an increased ability to negotiate complex alliances
and manage network relationships. Joint leadership will be
a key. |
| 5. |
Sharing leadership:
Sharing leadership responsibilities will be required to navigate
global partnerships. Executive team leaders, keeping in mind
a common vision and purpose, will collaborate to make effective
decisions and strive for integration, not control. |
It is important to remember that leadership is an emergent quality
that is produced by the acts of many people in complex systems.
The corporate culture must recognize and accept the need for leaders
to get help. Leaders cannot walk on water or leap tall buildings,
no matter how strong they appear to be. Executive coaches are necessary
for the continuing development of leadership strengths, and will
be even more so in the future.
Who's in Charge?
Nobody!
Writing about leadership in the future,
Harlan Cleveland goes so far as to say that leadership will be
so shared that there will be Nobody in Charge (John Wiley & Sons,
2002). He reasons that now, and even more so in the future:
1. Systems are so complex that no one
can truly be in charge of anything significant.
2. The more people are involved in a decision, the better the chance
it will be implemented.
3. Looser organizational forms are superior to controlled forms.
4. Planning must be fluid and subject to change.
5. Information must be shared rather than hoarded.
Cleveland suggests four extraordinary traits of the leader of
the future:
| 1. |
Physical
energy: Being able to work long hours and do a lot of homework.
Today's leader cannot afford to be insulated from new, challenging
or different ideas. |
| 2. |
Consensus management:
Decision makers must consult or even bargain with the people
who will carry out their orders. In reality, many interest
groups are involved in any given real-work issue, and often
the decisions need to be negotiated. Being able to lead distinct
groups toward a consensus is a critical leadership skill. |
| 3. |
Exhilaration of choice: A large array of choices will exhilarate, not depress an effective
executive, who should be able to accept complex social management
with relish. |
| 4. |
Joy
of motion: Good executives steer more than they drive. The
momentum is already there and the executive's job is to guide
it with a sensitive touch. |
The leader of the future will need an integrative mind. Leaders
must be comfortable working under high levels of uncertainty and
near-chaos. He or she must be able to accept a leadership role
without hierarchical authority. This leader will be able to take
various elements of a changing world and blend them together to
make sense for others. By offering this vision, the leader will
be able to get people working together on a common objective. That
is what being a leader is about. ( Cleveland, Harlan, Nobody in
Charge , John Wiley & Sons, 2002).
Reader Survey:
What do you see as the most important priority/qualities for effective
leadership in the future?
If you feel this article is relevant, please feel free to forward
it to colleagues.
Your comments and feedback are always welcomed.
Resources
Bennis, W., Spreitzer, G.M., Cummings, T.G., The Future of Leadership,
Today's Top Leadership Thinkers Speak to Tomorrow's Leaders , Jossey-Bass,
2001.
Cleveland, Harlan; Nobody in Charge;
John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Goldsmith, M., Greenberg, C. L.,
Robertson, A. & Hu-Chan,
M.; Global Leadership: the Next Generation; FT Prentice Hall, 2003.
Hamel, G., & Prahalad, C.K.,
Competing for the Future , Harvard Business School Press, 1994.
Hesselbein, F., Goldsmith, M., Beckhard, R; The Organization of
the Future , Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Working
Resources is a Leadership Consulting, Training and Executive Coaching
Firm Helping Companies Assess, Select, Coach and Retain Emotionally
Intelligent People; Emotional Intelligence-Based Interviewing and
Selection; Multi-Rater 360-Degree Feedback; Career Coaching; Change
Management; Corporate Culture Surveys and Executive Coaching.
Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach
Trusted Advisor to Senior Leadership Teams
Subscribe to Working Resources FREE E-mail Newsletter.
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