“Something to chew on over your breakfast”
Since the Global Financial Crisis delivered its king hit ten years ago, CEOs have been kept on their toes: ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving. Initially, their role required them to focus on downsizing, resizing, and right-sizing (all fancy words for restructuring). Now they must also deal with digitising their businesses and building agile, innovative senior leadership teams in order to stay in the lead.
By way of example…
The fashionable phrase on everyone’s lips is “disruptive innovation.” The opportunities and threats associated with digital business have impacted not only on businesses, but also on the Government sector. Think back to a decade ago. Who would have imagined that Government departments would be employing CEs and senior executives from the commercial sector; leaders who focus on creating strategy and business models (set out on A3 sheets) rather than drafting lengthy policy documents? And who would have imagined the Prime Minister using social media to win the election, or creating a personal blog to inform and influence the Government’s increasingly diverse constituencies?
The impact on business and government…
The lingua and execution of digital business has created a new paradigm that has now infiltrated every aspect of our world. As a consequence, even the Chiefs of Defence and Police and their peers in their dual roles as chief executives and chiefs-of-service, now need to think and act as digitally savvy executives. Their ‘must-have’ competencies include being knowledgeable in strategy, finance, marketing, people and leadership development in a digital context, in order to communicate with and influence their ministers, and lead the new cadre of senior executives who speak in business talk and use business jargon.
The impact on talent ‘hiring’ and the case for ‘talent development’…
At a broader level, CEOs are competing for digital-savvy talent in order to grow and surpass their rivals. Unfortunately, most available ‘hires’ are typically under-developed in up-to-date business and digital skills. Those that do have these digital and business capabilities, are often high on competence, and low on leadership. For some reason, digital / business savvy and leadership competence present as dichotomies. This is a problem that needs to be urgently and widely addressed.
As we can learn from Richie McCaw, technical and functional skills and competence are essential, yet not enough to win the game. Business, like rugby, is now a fast paced, globally competitive team-based World Cup activity. Those at the top of the league have highly effective teams, particularly at the senior executive level.
What is keeping CEOs awake at night?
The list in most CEOs Moleskine Journal…
We have noticed that most CEOs are early risers. They tend to stop off at their favourite cafe for a coffee-fix on their way to work each morning, take out their Moleskine journal and Montblanc pen, and jot down a list of things that are top-of-mind.
Their notes reveal similar concerns:
1. How can I find (or develop) digitally and commercially savvy senior executives, who work fast and nimbly?
2. Who can I rely on to support me with the selection and ‘on-boarding’ process using next generation evidence-based processes?
3. Who can help me to develop EQ in my newly-recruited experts?
4. How can I get these experts to work together effectively?
5. How can I turn my managers into leaders who can build and motivate their teams?
6. How can I develop my senior leaders to have an across-organisation view, rather than a myopic vision that creates and maintains silos that compete with one another?
7. How can I build a culture of innovation?
8. How can we get our leaders to commit to a performance-focused and customer-centred approach in our organisation?
The cost of getting it wrong…
Making a ‘bad senior hire’ can be very costly in terms of the financial, operational and strategic impact on an organisation. Yet the reality is that the talent pool that CEOs go to when hiring senior executives is very shallow and full of last paradigm executives who are at risk of getting close to their use-by date.
Hiring Top Guns who lack EQ and leadership skills, will mostly likely create a toxic culture, as they tend to be influential yet negative role-models.
Fostering the perpetuation of a tank farm of silos creates cross-organisation competition, politics and bureaucracy. There is no way that these structures can fend off the nimble niche players and digital start-ups who will inevitably bite off the profitable edges of your business.
Operating an organisation with a grab bag of KPIs that are not real-time or digitally integrated, is akin to the Captain of a Boeing 777-300 night flying using her Granddad’s WWII binoculars. The new breed of CEOs will be adopting integrated diagnostics and analytics to pilot their organisations from the Flight Deck.
So what are the solutions?…
Over the last fifteen years, ISL has been facilitating programmes, workshops and leadership coaching. During the last five years, ISL has also developed a suite of digital systems at the personal leadership, team leadership and enterprise-wide levels.
You are invited to our new LeaderLAB where we are role-modelling innovative leadership and organisational development processes that drive performance – operationally, digitally, strategically and financially.
“TO TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANISATION
FIRST TRANSFORM YOUR STRATEGIC LEADERS”
INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Trusted Developers and Advisors to Business and Government for over 15 years.
Readers are invited to share their views, examples and experiences in the comments section below.
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