Five Leadership Shifts for Thriving Organisations in the New Era

In this edition, we will uncover the dynamic landscape of leadership in the context of thriving organisations and delve into the five essential shifts that leaders must embrace to navigate this transformative era successfully.

Quote of the Day

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humour, but without folly.”

—Jim Rohn

Discovery Learning

We are living in a time of great challenges and unparalleled opportunities. In its place, a new organisational approach that embraces openness and adaptability, unlocks the collective potential of people, and prioritises sustainable and inclusive growth has been gradually emerging. This shift in approach also necessitates a change in how business leaders operate and lead their teams.

McKinsey has identified five fundamental shifts in mindset and approaches that redefine the role of leaders and guide organisations towards success in this transformative era. These shifts go beyond traditional norms and leverage existing skills to expand leadership capacity, enabling leaders to meet the demands of today's disruptive environment. Let's delve into them!

What we focus on: Beyond profit to impact

Traditionally, companies were solely focused on maximising shareholder profits, but modern organisations must go beyond profits and strive to maximise value and impact for all stakeholders.?

To achieve this, leaders must transform from mere managers seeking incremental improvements into visionary and bold individuals who:

• align people around a clear and shared purpose and aspiration?
• envision the values that will benefit all stakeholders, as measured by key operating and financial metrics
• contribute positively to wider society and the natural environment

Case study: Netflix

Netflix exemplifies this transformation by embedding their commitment to vision, purpose, and stakeholder impact within their culture, resulting in remarkable success as they shifted to streaming and producing their own content. By prioritising stakeholder value, Netflix experienced substantial growth, tripling revenue, increasing earnings 32-fold, and achieving a remarkable 57 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in their share price, far surpassing the performance of the S&P 500 index.

How we create value: Beyond competition to co-creation

Leaders must evolve from being planners to architects, leveraging available opportunities and resources to shape new systems and models.?

This shift necessitates leadership to:

• generate a strong and stable platform of core competencies that drive value
• deliver value by applying the core competencies to a continually evolving business portfolio, both organically and through systematic mergers and acquisitions?
• amplify value through creative partnerships with suppliers and competitors?

Case study: DBS

For example, DBS, the Development Bank of Singapore, co-created new value by reimagining their offerings with an abundance mindset. Moving beyond a product-centric focus, the bank adopted an ecosystem approach, centred on solving customers' needs and fulfilling their "jobs to be done." In 2017, they launched a platform with 150 APIs (application programming interfaces, which allow systems to communicate with one another). Five years later, that number increased to 1,000 APIs with more than 400 partners. The bank acquired new customers through its partners, broadening into property, auto, travel, and utilities.

How we organise: Beyond command to collaboration

New paradigms of work organisation are emerging, shifting away from hierarchical silos towards autonomous teams working with transparency and trust. Leaders must evolve into catalysts who empower and guide self-managing teams, promoting connection, dialogue, and cooperation across traditional boundaries.?

To drive the shift, leadership can:

• encourage and empower people in small, self-regulating entrepreneurial teams
• foster horizontal transparency and collaboration throughout the network and beyond
• move from a hierarchy of individual leaders to networks of leadership teams

Case study: Aon?

Aon, a financial services company, provides a good example of leaders acting as catalysts. Their investment in development and training enabled a shift in mindsets and behaviours, fostering trust-based networks and multidisciplinary teams focused on customers. This shift resulted in remarkable outcomes, including the integration of 60 sub-brands into a unified global organisation and significant market capitalization growth from $6 billion in 2005 to $50 billion in 2020.

How we get work done: Beyond control to evolution

Leading companies today strive to become agile learning organisations. Leaders are transitioning from controllers to coaches, adopting a mindset of discovery, and fostering rapid exploration, execution, and learning.?

Facilitating this transformation requires leadership to:

• operate in short cycles of decision, action, and learning
• regularly reprioritise the portfolio of initiatives to simultaneously execute today’s business, cocreate tomorrow’s business, and let go of yesterday’s business
• engage and lead people, helping them understand—and be excited by—the fact that there will be ongoing significant change

Case study: Intuit

Intuit, a financial software company, exemplified this shift by prioritising customers, innovation, and design, fostering a culture of design thinking, experimentation, and fast learning. Feedback and accountability were encouraged at all levels, such as senior executives publishing their own performance reviews, admitting mistakes, and seeking feedback. The company also provided dedicated time for employees' experimentation and streamlined decision-making processes based on data and dialogue. This shift enabled remarkable growth and innovation, doubling its customer base to 50 million and increasing its value from $10 billion to $60 billion.

How we show up: Beyond expectations to wholeness

Many leaders often adhere to a mindset of being solely defined by their professional roles and performance at work, but it is crucial for them to move beyond transactional relationships and take the time to connect with others on a personal level, fostering understanding, sharing values, beliefs, hopes, and fears, and unlocking the hidden potential within.

Leaders can facilitate this shift by:

• expanding awareness and consciousness—the inner state, external context, and whole-system perspective
• developing greater emotional regulation, choice of response, and adaptation to new situations
• practising well-being as a skill—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual

Case study: A Singaporean multinational company?

For instance, a Singaporean multinational company preparing for an IPO invested in the development of nearly 100 leaders and their teams, guiding them towards authenticity and wholeness. This effort resulted in enhanced self-awareness, empowerment, feedback culture, and psychological safety, enabling the leaders to navigate the challenges of leading their teams to a successful IPO amidst a global pandemic.

In short, achieving sustainable and inclusive growth in organisations necessitates a holistic leadership transformation, which commences with senior leadership teams. As leaders enhance their self-awareness and embrace empowering mindsets and practices, they will be able to develop adaptive capacity and collaborate collectively to evolve the organisation, with the ultimate goal of becoming a thriving entity.

Adapted from New leadership for a new era of thriving organisations?

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