We live in an uncertain and challenging world. Business leaders need to acquire the capability to deal with everything from economic upheaval to geopolitical risk. This makes finding leaders that combine these capabilities with strong domain knowledge of the business a very difficult task. An alternative is to take our existing high potential managers and add these ‘going beyond’ capabilities. We need to do this at age levels typically 10 years younger than for their predecessors. Today’s leaders have the responsibility to train tomorrow’s. However, this is easier said than done, as senior executives are often overwhelmed by the demands on their time. This limits devoting time to train their next level executives to take up leadership positions. A focus on profitability and business development must be balanced with investing in people. Today, managers become CEOs or hold leadership positions at 40 and below – and not only in start-ups. The enthusiasm that younger leaders bring in for new models and processes is healthy, even as the experience of managing complex situations goes missing. Training them to take up leadership positions and retaining them is a challenge for organisations. One strategy is for organisations to identify employees at junior level with high potential and begin to train them right away. This training needs to move well beyond the traditional management development programmes offered by even the best business schools. I would suggest that these high potentials gain a greater understanding of the world that provides them with the context to effectively lead the business. ‘Understanding the world’ is a grand phrase; what does it mean? Multi-disciplinary perspective is essential to solving complex problems. Many of the best people in our organisations have graduated in engineering and management. Giving them an appreciation of history, both political and economic, can provide understanding of why countries are the way they are. Understanding geopolitics is difficult without the context history provides. Sociology and anthropology can help in appreciating deeper motivations and social behavior. Economic principles are fundamental to understanding why companies and countries succeed and fail. It is crucial to understand how technology can be managed to build deep capabilities within the firm, while gaining from and contributing to the wider innovation system outside. In addition, all organisations need to be fully comfortable operating internationally. Whether this means sourcing, selling, or manufacturing overseas, we need to be able to bring people from diverse cultures together and have them function as an effective team. We need to appreciate that no culture, including our own, is better than other cultures. Bringing in the positives in many cultures and blending them into our own can lead to distinctive capabilities. Finally, ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘soft skills’ are critical skills needed to persuade, influence and convince others to achieve organisational goals. Empathy can be learnt through practice, through consciously playing particular roles.
