TOMORROW'S LEADERS
Opening remarks
“Leadership is the capacity to make people do different things
that will make the difference” Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM
Companies are looking for tomorrow’s leaders, and people are looking to become tomorrow’s leaders. Companies are changing, either they have become agile or they better start planning to become strategically and organizationally agile. To manage a changing, complex, and confounding business environment, organizations need more leaders; they need more different leaders. The style of leadership has changed. Formerly, a few leaders led large groups of people; now many leaders lead small teams. Formerly the few leaders had all the answers; now many leaders look first for the right questions. Formerly, leaders commanded, controlled, and chastised; now leaders steer, support, and stimulate. Vive la différence !
While traditional leaders tend to fixate facts and figures in order to manage tangible assets, innovative leaders drive core competencies, which consist of intangible resources that cannot be counted or precisely measured. A systemic approach to tomorrow’s leaders suggests that we take into account all the relevant factors. So, based on some of the mind-maps and methods presented in my “The Platform of Agile Management and the Program to Implement It”, I suggest that we look at 3 sets of factors, namely: the aptitudes or types of talents, the attitudes that drive the behaviors that influence how the talents will be used, and - last but not least - that we look at the evolution of the external environment. My paper includes some excerpts from my aforementioned book.
Members that are interested in this subject should look up the paper that I post under the same title on LinkedIn. They can discuss the innovative ideas of my paper also on my LinkedIn group: <Agile Management Innovation>. They can also propose different approaches. They can ask for an invitation to join also my LinkedIn group.
Approaches to select, to synergize, and to train leaders
“The rarest resource is the human talent”.
Prof. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Geneva
Leaders combine their talents to spark and to steer the talents of their people. In order to spark the talents of their people and to steer their thinking, their behaviors, and their actions, the leaders underscore the purpose and the value of their collective work. Moreover, as highlighted by Google’s “Aristotle” project, the leaders must safeguard the moral and the material protection of their people. Just as companies need a vision and confidence to move on, also the people need vision and confidence to keep moving, and to fully commit their talents.
The leaders together with their team-members select, integrate, and train new team-members or new leaders so as to ensure a good cultural match as well as commensurate contributions to the continuous development of critical competencies. The critical competencies of the leaders and of their team-members are a combination of aptitudes – such as experience, insights, intuition – and attitudes – such as the mindset and the combination of talents. Let me first lay out the model that I propose for the 5 types of talents, and then the model that I advocate to drive people’s behaviors. Finally, we will mention the external situation.
The talents come first !
The Conference Board and McKinsey reported in “The State of Human Capital 2012” found that almost 90% of the surveyed executives complained about talent shortages. They expected that this shortage will become more acute by 2020 when they predicted a worldwide shortage of 40 million college-educated people. Since then, the problem has probably become even more acute.
PricewaterhouseCoopers executive survey just ahead of the World Economic Forum of Davos 2013, and they reported the following.
<> Talent is the # 1 issue on the mind of the polled business-leaders.
<> 43% of these leaders consider that it has become more difficult to find talents.
<> 53% of them fear that the lack of the right talents will endanger the growth of their enterprise !
<> 75% of the polled executives find it necessary to modify how their company manages talents !!!
Following Carl Jung, industrial psychologists look at “personalities”. Dr. M. Belbin’s model features 10 personalities, Qualia’s model 13 personalities. I am not a psychologist, and I just wanted to focus on “talents”. So, I looked at projects, and I found that they are driven by 5 different types of talents, which I show hereafter.
° Ideation, which involves conceptualization, systemic thinking, vision
° Investigation and improvements, which involve analysis, scenario management, judgment
° Imagination and testing, which involve strategic thinking, tactical thinking, pragmatism
° Implementation and initiative, which involve perseverance, confidence, result orientation
° Interpersonal talents, which involve ease of contact, proficiency of communication, and
persuasion. Please note that this talent applies to all the aforementioned steps.
In practice, people have different talents albeit to a varying extent, and they apply their talents in different manners depending on the internal and on the external environments. So, my model schematizes and simplifies a dynamically complex reality.
I defined the talent is a unique combination of attitudes and aptitudes that talented people bring to bear on a given situation in order to make an extraordinary contribution. Mind you, as cautioned by René Descartes “It is not enough to have a good mind, the main thing is to use it well”.
As already mentioned, some of the traditional organizations focus on what can be counted in order to be accountable. So, they look at the number and the cost of the personnel, but they often poorly manage the combination of the different types of talents because they mismanage the intangible resources because they do not show in the conventional accounting. And so unsurprisingly, traditional organizations’ business strategy does not integrate the management of talents, and consequently managers are not held accountable for developing talents.
As applies to all intangible resources, talents do not work as a stand-alone. Moreover, they work over the medium term in complex loops of interactivity. Obviously, if the organization is very fragmented and vastly disconnected, as is the case of some traditional organizations, it will be more difficult to manage the interactions among the intangible resources such as the talents.
As opposed to traditional organizations, agile and innovative enterprises implement a systemic approach, which promotes the interactions of people and cultures; the integration of practices and of disciplines; the combination of the intellectual and of social value resulting from stimulating interactions among the live-forces of the organization, which include the personnel as well as some of the enterprises principal partners.
They also implement a stimulating approach, which builds on the collaborative management mode and on group dynamics in order to elicit the desirable behaviors, namely commitment, cooperation, and collective creativity.
Finally, agile and innovative enterprises implement a systematic approach, which empowers the self-managed teams to participate in the strategies, to develop their self-referentials, and to take the appropriate initiatives in the frame of the assigned project.
The behavioral drivers: the next issue
As mentioned in the previous section, talents are a unique combination of attitudes and of aptitudes, whereby the former tends to drive the latter. Attitudes are very intangible, but they can be influenced temporarily or durably. However, they can also suddenly change as a result of internal and/or external factors.
Aptitudes can camp on past knowledge and on past experiences, or they can evolve. The extent to which they are able to evolve depends on attitudes and on the environment. So, we are dealing with elements that are somewhat difficult to appraise and to act on. But, leaders can act on the behavioral drivers, by emphasizing, by coaching, by monitoring and by measuring behaviors.
In my new book, I mapped the 5 behavioral drivers as follows: the rational, the relational, the emotional, the creative, and the result and/or the reward oriented behavioral drivers. Leaders can ensure that the right combination of behavioral drivers is being efficiently applied.
For example, ideation talents at work on the ideation phase of projects need to be driven by creative, relational, emotional factors. Having them to focus on short-term results and rewards may distort and depress their behaviors. Conversely, the implementation talents need to focus on relational and on short-term results and rewards.
Last but not least, the environments
The internal and the external environments are to a large extent interactive and interdependent. The internal environment is shaped by the <organizational capital>, one of the 5 corporate capitals. The <organizational capital> drives the core of the management system by synergizing its 5 capital components, namely: the <strategy fundamentals>, the <style of the leadership>, the <systems of management>, the <structures of the organization>, and the <shared core competencies>.
While teams and team-members may have their personality, they all have to remain in sync with the <organizational capital>, which provides the stability that supports synergies and agility. Of course, elements of the <organizational capital> can change, however, since they are all interdependent, if one of the capital components of the <organizational capital> has to change, all the 5 capital components must change in sync. Business-leaders that do not really understand what I call the <organizational capital>, neglect the proper alignment of the management system, and impose on the lifeforces of the organization all sorts of strategic and organizational constraints.
In a volatile and complex environment, the short-term is a fugitive moment that accounting recalls very accurately, but that for all practical purposes has already past. Thus, when recruiting internally or externally new leaders or new team-members, due consideration must be given to the foreseeable changes inside the organization as well as in its business environment. So, as holds true for enterprises, new recruits will have to work with the people in place while being alert, adaptable, and agile so as to be become valuable change-agents.
Closing remarks
“At the end of the day, we bet on people, not strategies”. Larry Bossidy
Talents can turn what used to be an ordinary business into an exceptional business. Let me put that in its broader context. Above we discussed 2 corporate capitals, namely: the <talent capital> and the <organizational capital>. But, the <business balance sheet> features 5 corporate capitals, namely: the <organizational capital>, the <talent capital>, the <market capital>, the <life and time cycles>, and the <financial capital>. Putting the <talent capital> among the corporate capitals ensures that the management will monitor closely the value that is created/destroyed also on all corporate capitals.
The <talent capital> interacts very closely with customers, with partners, and - if applicable - with the distributors. The <organizational capital> steers and synergizes the inner forces of the enterprise including the talents so as to serve proficiently the chosen markets.
Talents age, customers and suppliers age, and the management system ages. The acceleration of changes has accelerated the aging process. The <life and time cycles> ensure the management pays due attention to the aging process, that in some cases can be slowed down, but that in all cases must be taken timely into consideration. Developing talents and developing relations with the external partners take time, but at the pace of things today does not leave much time.
Finally, the <financial capital> provides the tangible assets the other corporate capitals need, and it consolidates the results achieved on the other corporate capitals.
I cordially invite group-members to comment on my approach or to suggest a different approach. People that have not yet joined my LinkedIn group <Agile Management Innovation> can easily apply to join or email me to get an invitation.
Bibliography
Willy A. Sussland "The Platform of Agile Management and the Program to Implement It" 2017