The adaptable leader or super-hyper specialised knowledge?

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, adapting, learning across disciplines, and solving complex problems are more crucial than ever. Reflecting on some of the critical steps in my career and the leaders from whom I have learned a lot, I've realised that the most influential leaders can bridge diverse areas of expertise, anticipate cross-industry disruptions, and apply insights from seemingly unrelated fields to drive innovation.

Traditionally, business leaders have relied heavily on industry-specific expertise, or you can always hear when you are entitled to change a company, "but that is the way things have always been done here".

While deep knowledge is valuable and critical in some areas, I've observed that this approach often leads to siloed thinking and missed opportunities.

Early in my career, I transitioned from the petrochemical sector to the healthcare industry—unthinkable, right? At first glance, these fields might seem worlds apart. However, I quickly realised that the process optimisation principles I honed in petrochemicals and my capacity to build customer value mattered to our customers (and to my bosses)!

This experience taught me a crucial lesson: fundamental problem-solving and process improvement skills are universally applicable, and you must find the right partner to teach you what you do not know!

It wasn't about being an expert in each field from day one but about being open to observing, identifying differences and patterns, and making creative connections.

The Unexpected Synergies in Driving Growth

Later in my career, I had the opportunity to sponsor an innovative program in GE Latin America. Partnering with HR colleagues, we sought smart and energised people, wherever they were, to drive growth in the company as part of the Experience Commercial Leadership Program, known as ECLPs.

We recruited people from the Telecom, Hotelling, Hospitals, Consulting, Chemicals, and other segments to drive growth opportunities in Healthcare, Lighting, Energy, and Oil and Gas, Aviation and Transportation, to give some examples. These future leaders' roles required assessing opportunities across various industries, and their diverse backgrounds became valuable assets.

This experience solidified my belief that the most innovative solutions often come from the intersection of different fields. If you want to get away from the obvious, be ready to innovate in allocating people, not by seals won in the past but by what they can do next. It's at these crossroads that true disruption and value creation occur.

What happened to most of the ECLPs? They now lead companies or hold leadership positions in diverse industries and segments.

Transforming Pharmaceuticals with Cross-Industry Insights

When I was asked to join the team to lead the transformation of a centennial healthcare company, someone told me that my lack of pharmaceutical experience was critical for me to drive the required change. It is not just me but also partners, agencies, etc.; we need fresh air and new thinking to differentiate ourselves.

While many excellent and experienced colleagues from different healthcare segments were critical, we also learnt from people from the agency side, banking, food and beverage and gaming segments. We onboarded agencies with positive food and beverage, mining, and tech track records. A melting pot? Not the secret sauce to innovation!

Despite a limited background in pharma, our teams made significant improvements by applying lessons learned from other industries. And, with the openness to learn, we directly launched multi-billion dollar products and drove sales improvement in critical accounts.

The New Leadership Paradigm: Embracing the Change!

The most effective way to lead in today's complex business environment is through an interconnected, cross-practice approach. Leaders who can navigate this landscape will be best positioned to drive innovation and growth.

Key principles for this new leadership paradigm include:

1. Cultivating Diverse Expertise: Build teams with backgrounds spanning multiple areas of expertise - make sure you hire someone better than you in something! This diversity allows for approaching each challenge from various angles, fostering innovative solutions.
2. Encouraging Knowledge Flow Across Borders: Both geographical and industry borders. Create systems and processes that facilitate sharing insights and best practices across countries and sectors. Some years ago, Uber disrupted the transportation business. How often have you heard someone refer to the "Uber of something" as someone willing to disrupt another segment?
3. Developing Holistic Problem-Solving Skills: Rather than relying on industry-specific solutions, develop strategies that draw on insights from relevant industries, creating unique approaches for each challenge.
4. Fostering a Continuous Learning Culture: Commit to constant learning and skill development across various domains, ensuring you and your team are always at the forefront of emerging trends and technologies. One of the last game changers in my career was to be open to allow one of my team members to go off the box in a new training program.
5. Promoting Collaborative Innovation: Foster partnerships between your organisation, diverse teams, and industry experts, creating an ecosystem that generates breakthrough solutions. Not all companies are open to that (sort of ego-myopia), and I have always been sorry to see that. However, it was terrific when companies allowed that sort of innovative thinking!??

Why This Approach Matters in a Technology-Driven World

In today's AI-blockchain-quantum computing maniacs, technologies from one sector are increasingly disrupting others. Consider these examples:

• Blockchain, originally developed for cryptocurrency, is now revolutionising supply chain management across industries.
• Machine learning algorithms developed for social media are being applied to healthcare diagnostics.
• IoT technologies from manufacturing are transforming agriculture through precision farming.

By breaking down industry silos and fostering a culture of cross-sector learning and collaboration, leaders can:

• Anticipate and leverage technological disruptions before they reshape their industry.
• Identify non-obvious solutions to complex problems by drawing on diverse technological advances (trust me, I saw a CT Scanner being sold to an oil and gas company and a consulting company rising star developing a Netflix approach).
• Create innovative products and services at the intersection of different fields.
• Drive efficiency by applying cutting-edge technologies from seemingly unrelated industries.

I invite business leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals to embrace this interconnected approach to learning and problem-solving. Here's how you can start:

1. Cultivate Curiosity: Regularly explore technological developments in industries outside your own. It would help if you always found out where the next big idea might come from.
2. Look for Patterns: When facing a challenge, consider how similar problems might have been solved with technology and approaches in other industries.
3. Build Diverse Networks and Connect the Dots: Connect with professionals from various sectors. These relationships can be invaluable sources of fresh perspectives and help you reshape ecosystems to drive growth.
4. Encourage Cross-Training: In your organisations, create opportunities for employees to work on projects outside their primary expertise, especially those involving new technologies.
5. Embrace Continuous Learning: Make lifelong learning a priority. The most valuable skill in today's economy is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn, especially when it comes to new technologies.

As we navigate an increasingly complex and technology-driven business landscape, I'm more convinced that the future belongs to leaders who can bridge the gaps between industries, foster innovation, and drive meaningful progress.

The complex challenges we face today—and those yet to come—won't be solved by specialists working in isolation. They'll be tackled by diverse teams of adaptable problem-solvers who can seamlessly navigate different domains, bringing together the best ideas and technologies from various fields to create transformative solutions.

I invite you to embrace this new leadership paradigm. Together, we can redefine how businesses approach problem-solving, driving innovation and growth that transcends traditional industry boundaries. In doing so, we'll be better prepared to harness the power of emerging technologies, regardless of origin, to create value and drive progress across all sectors of the global economy.

Image: Ideogram.ai generated - prompt: "A modern CT scanner in a high-tech industrial setting, surrounded by oil and gas engineers. The scanner is being used to analyze large, rugged rock samples extracted from a drilling site. Engineers in safety gear and hard hats are discussing data on digital screens, displaying detailed cross-sectional images of the rock's internal structure. The background includes industrial equipment, pipes, and control panels, blending the medical-grade technology of the CT scanner with the rugged, industrial environment of oil and gas exploration."