People; Leadership :The Revolutionary Messiah

TRIMILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT : LEADERSHIP
The Revolutionary Messiah

By E. Abraham

How do you build a frog? Do you study the croak, the prodigious leap, the hyperbolic eyes? No, you study the pond. How does one know what kind of leaders will be needed in the 21st Century? Do you look at traits, skills, or competencies? You study the pond: the environment of tomorrow. What will it look like? There are 3 converging forces that will re-shape the environment of tomorrow's leaders: globalisation; constant, often discontinuous, change; and a revolution in infotech.

The global village has become a reality. Financial markets already electronically move 1 trillion dollars a day, crossing borders as they please. Today's global business is open to all comers, not just the largest firms or most advanced nations. We live in a world of accelerated change and choice, dislocation and discontinuity. And there is more freedom and choice in the world today, and definitely more confusion. The only thing one can be certain about tomorrow is that it will be different from today. This millennium's leader must learn to live with the unfamiliar, the uncertain, and the unpredictable.

The world has grown economically inter-dependent. What makes this possible is the revolution in infotech. From electronic mailboxes to video conferences, infotech is re-directing the flow of information and creating the template for a global organisation unrestrained by the shackles of time, distance, and departmental persuasion. This freedom provides the speed, agility, and flexibility demanded in a highly-competitive global market. It also alters the very nature of managerial authority. The drill of command and control is giving way to bonds of trust and support. Vertical structures are being replaced by the lateral, informal, and inherently horizontal essence of a networked organisation. Managers used to dealing with people on the basis of their position in a chain of command will soon find themselves navigating a complex organisational web of inter-dependent people and inter-woven parts.

If these describe the organisational environment in the 21st Century, what kind of leadership do we need? I see successful leaders performing 3 critical leadership-roles: visionary, empowering, and team leadership. The first task that will face a leader in the new millennium is to help the organisation and its members develop a sense of value, meaning, and purpose if none exists, or clarify it, if there is one. They must be value-driven and performance oriented. They should lead people to do things the right way, and to do the right thing. Today's leaders should be able to get on their hands and knees, and be prepared to do what they ask others to do.

Future leaders will also have to be people with a clear vision for their organisation. Vision describes an ideal future end-state, it tells employees where they and the organisation are headed, and defines a set of principles that will govern how to get there. This shared vision inspires leaders and those they lead. In implementing the vision, leaders accept the reality that they do not have all the answers.

Empowerment, in its simplest form, is nothing more than sharing decision-making power with others. This is easily achieved when those being empowered are competent and willing (and able) to comprehend the organisation's vision. If this is not the case, the leader must create an environment in which employees can acquire the necessary competence through training, coaching and feedback mechanisms.

Many organisations are crippled by the cancer of bureaucracy, with people caught up in non-value added activities. Their primary concern revolves around maintaining a position or moving up a layer of management; not value-creation. Leaders are expected to make things happen, either on their own or through others. Thus, this millennium's leaders must be generous in their delegation of authority and responsibility.

Leaders of the future should be givers, not takers. They should be beyond petty considerations like holding on to a position or a title. They must accept the fact that their organisation could have young managers who are far better equipped then they are, and welcome their participation in building a better, more competitive organisation. This requires all good leaders to have a succession-plan, and focus on the development of future leaders. In the future, it will be the availability and readiness of a successor that will determine when a leader steps aside; not a pre-determined date or age.

But there is also more to empowerment than just delegating decision-making authority. The essence of empowerment is a recognition of the dignity and worth of all the people in the organisation. Leaders have to look at their employees as people, not warm bodies who perform organisational tasks. One of their primary concerns should be creating a work environment that, in some way, makes their employees people who better can contribute to work, home, and the community.

The leader of the future will also need to possess one more characteristic. They will have to master the art of forming and managing teams. Tomorrow's best-selling ideas will not come from individual heroes; they will be the product of teams that subsume individual aspirations and objectives towards the achievement of a greater organisational goal. Future leaders will have to master teamwork. They will have to understand how to work with, and through, others because no one person can possibly master all divergent sources of information required to make good decisions. The very diversity of teams composed of individuals with different talents becomes a competitive advantage. Academic and consultant Dave Ulrich pens a profile of the leader of the future. He believes this millennium's leaders will be known:

Less for what they say, and more for what they deliver.
Less by their title and position, and more by their expertise and competence.
Less by what they control, and more by what they shape.
Less by the goals they set, and more by the mindsets they build.
And both for great personal credibility and exceptional organisational capabilities.

In effect, today's leaders must have equal parts of visionary-, empowering-, and team-leadership.

E. Abraham is a professor at the Xavier Institute of Management

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