The 2020 Leader

Guide to navigate future

Prediction is difficult, especially if its about the future. But then human beings
love to try and peek into the future through a crystal ball, planetary positions,
lines of the palm, researching mega-trends and projecting the current
available knowledge about things for a future possibility.
As a child in the seventies, I grew up in Kerala with my grandmother and great
grandmother. Every evening, we would sit in our front garden, by an old tree
with a Jasmine plant growing in its branches; and would listen to the radio.
Back then, radios took quite a while to warm up and start. And speaking of
radios, it took 38 years for them to amass 5 crore users. It is a rather a long
warming up time when we consider that Facebook took only 2 years to amass
5 crore users.
The fast pace of change that all of us experience nowdays, along with
environmental and sustainability challenges, growing concern for individuality
and meaning, and the fact that leaders now face more adaptive problems than
technical problems demands a new mindest and competencies from the 2020
leader.

What are some of the trends shaping our future, and what kind of leadership
behaviors will help us navigate through our future? What leadership
competencies will help us manage the trends that we see today?
New form of Globalisation: East moving towards the West
The London Cab is as much an icon of the British capital as the Big Ben or
the Tower of London. Chinese car manufacturer Zhejiang Geely bought black
cab maker Manganese Bronze. Geely also bought Volvo in 2010 and couple
of years ago Tata bought Jaguar and Landrover, two of the proudest names in
the car industry.
Indians are now leading massive global organizations, and the likes of Satya
Nadella, Indra Nooyi, Shantanu Narayen, Rakesh Kapoor, Ajit Jain, Anshu
Jain, and Ajay Banga will increase in the coming years. In the academic world
Prof. Rakesh Khurana, Sanjeev Kulkarny, Deepak Jain and Nitin Nohria along
with many others are heading prestigious universities worldwide.
The new Globalisation is East moving towards the West, while professionals
from the west continue landing in their homland in the East to do meaningful
work. So the world is shrinking and the saying "such a small world" is literally
true. This means that Indian leaders need to be global leaders in 2020.

Can we turn the clock back? Environmental challenges

Two months ago Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple said in a shareholder meeting
that Apple's environmental efforts also made economic sense, but when
challenged by a conservative shareholder activism group to pledge that Apple
wouldn't do anything related to the environment that didn't follow a clear profit
motive, Cook firmly replied with anger in his voice that "we do a lot of things
for reasons besides profit motive," and recommended that anyone who had a
problem with that "should get out of the stock."
"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I
don't consider the bloody ROI." The need for system thinking rather than just
cause and effect thinking and long term vision yet focus on short-term
sustainability is what will help the future leader address the environmental
and resource challenges. We need leaders who will be socially responsible
and focus on a triple bottomline: Profits, People and the Planet.
The Return of Ayn Rand
But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, lets say, sixty years to live. Most of
that time will be spent working. Ive chosen the work I want to do. If I find no
joy in it, then Im only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can
find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is
a matter of standardsand I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand
at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.
The new generation is not just bothered about where the next meal will come
from but they are also bothered about belonging, autonomy, self-realisation,
meaning and purpose. The good news is that the younger generation
understands the need for personal meaning and values, and embrace Victor
E Frankl as much as they do Ayn Rand. Everything can be taken from a man
but one thing: the last of the human freedomsto choose ones attitude in
any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way. Frankl wrote in his
book, Man's search for meaning. Employees need work that suits their
personal values and adds meaning to their lives. Customers want products
that are customised for individual tastes and thus the time of Individualism
and personal meaning is here! This means that the 2020 leader needs to
clearly articulate a meaning, a purpose and manage organisations where
individuals can have their freedom, flexibility and still manage to work in a way
that is meaningful to their core values.
According to Ronald Heifetz, Founder of the Center for Public Leadership at
Harvard Kennedy School, leaders are confronted by two types of problems:
'technical' problems, which can be solved by expertise and good
management; and 'adaptive' problems like natural disasters, natural resource
supplies and economic problems which require innovation and continuous
learning. While traditional management strategies are useful in dealing with
technical problems, Heifetz argues that only leaders evolving their thinking

and values to a new, higher level can address the new centurys many
adaptive challenges.
Analjit Singh, who is the founder and chairman of Max Healthcare and Max
Bupa Health Insurance Company Limited and Executive-Chairman of Max
Life Insurance, while adressing a gathering recently said that we should move
away from blue-sky thinking to cloudy-sky thinking keeping in mind the fast
paced changes that we experience.
I reached out to a number of industry experts inquring about the
competencies of the 2020 leader. Among the people I approached, four were
from academicia, Prof. Robert Kegan from Harvard School (author of The
Immunity to Change), Prof. Vidyanand Jha from IIM Culcatta, Prof. Rishikesha
Krishnan from IIM Indore and Prof. Kavil Ramachandran from ISB,
Hyderabad. Robert Kegan wrote to me in his email that Companies that will
thrive in the years ahead, will be those with the greatest reservoir of human
capabilitiesnot in the leader alone, but in those who are led. No leader will
succeed trying only to buy, recruit, and retain the best talent available. The
single most important characteristic in the leader will be the ability to shape a
culture that can grow talent--helping people to become better versions of
themselvesevery day, in every job, woven into the way work gets done.
Kavil Ramachandran says that leaders need to have the ability to think from
multiple perspectives simultaneously, demonstrate adaptability and need to
have tolerance to ambiguity.
"The 2020 leaders need to manage diverse stakeholders; balance profitability
and sustainability and higher expectations of public accountability" said
Rishikesha Krishnan.
According to Porf Vidyanand Jha, the first set of
competencies is the ability to dream, think strategically along and to imagine.
The second is the ability to persuade or use influence without authority, and
the third is compassion.
I also reached out to senior HR and Learning professionals and a large
number of people respoded to the question, "what would it take to lead in
2020?" Rohit Thakur, HR Head Microsoft India, S Varadarajan, Chief Human
Resource officer, TATA SIA Airlines, Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Global HR head
strategic Initiatives & BPO, TCS, Makarand Khatavkar, Managing
Director&Head-Human Resources, Deutsche Bank AG, Prithvi Shergill, Chief
Human Resource officer, HCL, Piyush Mehta, Senior VP, HR at Genpact,
Sandeep Gandhi, CHRO Aircel Maxis Group, and Krish Shankar, Head of
HR, Indian Subcontinent at Philips, Dr Sujaya Banerjee, Chief Talent Officer
and Sr VP HR, Essar Servises, Shalini Sarin VP and Country Partner HR,
Schneider Electric, Sanjay Sen, Group HR head, Avantha group and Yogi
Sriram, Sr VP Larson and Toubro.
Here are the characteristics that describe a 2020 leader:
1. Mindfulness, authenticity, self-awareness, compassion and courage. Focus
was placed on developing the inner aspect, the 'being' aspect of a leader.
Courage is another important quality - having the courage to make oneself
vulnarable because the 2020 leader is not going to have all answers. S

Varadarajan mentioned this as Humaneness, using both head and heart.

Adaptive challenges require leaders to move up into a higher level of
awareness and conciousness.
2. Systems Thinking, Strategic thinking, learning agility. Ranjan from TCS also
mentioned "eclectic thinking". Cause and effect thinking will help us solve
today's problems but create more problems for tomorrow. The green
revolution is a great example for this. While hybrid seeds increased
productivity initially, in the long term we realised that the excessive use of
pesticides and chemicals destroyed the fertility of the soil and affected our
health negatively. To deal with this, tomorrow's leaders will need to think
strategically and systemically.
3. Managing ambiguity, inclusion and diversity: a collaborative mindset that
allows a leader to infuence people without authority and navigate through
complexities. This is also the ability to hold multiple truths and develop
acceptance of multiple realities. Tomorrow's leader needs to have an inclusive
mindset. A senior Indian leader was posted in the multinational company's
London office. He asked a reportee to make a presentation on his behalf for
an upcoming board meeting. On the day of the meeting, when he was going
to the boardroom he saw the lady who made the presentaion also walking
along with him. When he asked her why she was accompanying him, she
replied that since she made the presentation, she would present it as well.
This was a shock to him as he was used to his team members making
presentaions for him without actually presenting them. The point here is that
the Inclusion quotient of the 2020 leader needs to be high.
Rise of Athena Values and competencies
Looking at all this data, I believe that the 2020 leader would demonstrate
more Athena charecteristics than Ares charecteristics. Athena, the Greek
Goddess, led the disciplined & strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother
Ares: the patron of violence, bloodlust and slaughter"the raw force of war".
Athena is the goddess of knowledge, purity, arts, crafts, learning, justice and
wisdom. She represents intelligence, humility, consciousness, cosmic
knowledge, creativity, education, enlightenment, the arts, eloquence and
power. To lead in the future, we need to be more evolved, compassionate,
socially responsible, system focused and accepting of diversity and ambiguity.