Australian Institute of Management -- Management Today
Book Series
Soft Cover; AUD $34.95 | Purchase online at www.managementbooks.com.au
Leadership in Australia will undergo some significant changes in the 21st century. As in the past, leadership will remain a complex series of interactions between the leader, the followers and the situation. It is the changes in each of these aspects, however, that will give leadership in the 21st century its special characteristics.
In the workplace of the future the most important ingredients will be people and knowledge. The technologies that are mesmerizing us today will be recognised for what they really are - the embedded tools for doing business. It will be knowledge that will provide sustainable competitive advantage, and knowledge is the capital of people.
Australia, with few companies straddling the globe, faces the danger of becoming a business backwater without the drive of dynamic leadership, not only in business, but also in government and research. The boundary-less company will become a reality in the 21st century. Barriers between functions, people, countries, suppliers and customers, and between levels in the hierarchy will disappear or be pushed aside. This will be fuelled by the convergence of technologies and the globalisation of business.
Leaders in business will be dealing with a workforce of vastly different skills, both in their disciplines and their levels, with much more cultural diversity. One of the biggest impacts will be the effect of the demographic changes the next century will bring. This should not be underestimated and could well be one of the defining issues of the 21st century.
Women will emerge increasingly in leadership. The networked world offers the opportunity for gender-free and racially-free virtual communication, as opposed to traditional face-to-face communication, which will provide a working environment with a greater focus on what is done rather than who might do it. Leaders will need to be much more sensitive to human, psychological, cultural and family issues.
The knowledge economy will undoubtedly generate not only new businesses but also new business models. As leadership is essentially about creating change, the new economy will require much more sensitivity to the change process. Negotiation and conflict resolution will also take on new dimensions in a networked world.
One of our greatest challenges we face today is to ensure our leaders of tomorrow are equipped for success in the networked world. To achieve this, Australia must raise the profile of leadership and increase understanding that it is a key ingredient for success. Secondly, leadership must be seen to be more important than management. And thirdly, the difference between the two must be clearly understood.
And how will be achieve this? The answer lies in education, at all levels - education not only to work and do business profitably, but more importantly, education to lead in the networked world.
Ashley W. Goldsworthy AO OBE FTSE FCIE BCom, MSc., DipPubAd., AAUQ FCPA FCA FCIM FCIS FACS FIFS
Ashley Goldsworthy is the Executive Director of the Business/Higher Education Round Table. He has over 40 years experience in the public sector, business, the arts, science policy, education and politics. He has held the position of either chairman or chief executive of a number of large public and private companies and was formerly the Professor of Leadership and Dean of the School of Business at Bond University.
Prof. Goldsworthy is a Member of the Industry Research & Development Board; Founding Chairman of the Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies at RMIT, and chairman of several public and private companies. He is a Past Federal President of the Liberal Party, was World President of the International Federation for Information Processing, and is a Fellow of the Chinese Institute of Electronics.
At the start of the 21st century, it is tempting to paint a scenario of tremendous and imminent change, driven by globalisation and all pervasive technologies (such as information, communication and bio-technologies), with manufacturing roboticised, distribution automated (with GPS controlled deliveries), and B2B, B2C, C2C (and so on) all electronic. Whilst many of these changes will be realised, some things in the 21st century will be much as they are today, and perhaps even more so.
But what effect, if any, will these imminent changes have on leadership, and in particular, on leadership in Australia?
All of these changes will certainly have a significant effect on management, because management skills will need to be much more diverse than today. The convergence of technologies in a constantly changing global marketplace will create new demands on managers, particularly in the area of information or knowledge management. Whilst the traditional management functions of planning, controlling, organising and so on will still be much the same, the context in which they are applied will be very different.
The impact on leadership will be less dramatic but no less critical, and it will revolve around information and knowledge, particularly the differentiation of meaningful and relevant information from the exponentially multiplying masses of irrelevant information.
With the increasing globalisation of business, the advent of e-commerce, mega mergers, increased shareholder activity, and the continual redefining of business goals, strong business leadership is critical. In particular, Australia, with few companies straddling the globe, faces the danger of becoming a business backwater without the drive of dynamic leadership (not only in business, but also in government and research).
Leadership is a process, not a position or a role. Being the CEO, a 4-star General, the Pope, or the Prime Minister does not make someone a leader. Most of us have seen many examples of just the opposite. In fact, a common complaint about people in such positions is that they 'lack leadership'. The crie de coeur in the media every day is for 'more leadership' in every aspect of our lives, be it in politics, business, religion, sport, education, the arts, the community or the home.
Leadership is a complex series of interactions between the leader, the followers and the situation. The interplay of all of these factors gives rise to infinite variations of leadership. A person who is a brilliant leader with a particular set of people in a particular situation may turn out to be a hopeless leader when any of those components are changed. Change the people, the time, the environment, or any one of a thousand factors and the outcome is likely to be different. Would Winston Churchill have been such an outstanding leader if World War 2 had not occurred? Who knows? There is a distinct possibility he would not (some would say a distinct probability). What was it that enabled Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Alexander the Great to build great empires? How did some rather undistinguished people (Claudius Caesar, Adolph Hitler) rise to positions of great power?
The idea that leadership is something exercised only at the peak of the organisational pyramid was discarded long ago. It is now accepted that leadership can and does occur at all and any levels of an organisation. In the networked organisation of the future this will become even more important. This, plus forthcoming changes to interactions and the situation, will give leadership in the 21st century unique characteristics. Changes will be frequent and rapid, and the opportunities for leadership are likely to increase, but so too will the challenges.
To date, in Australia technology has been seen as the basis of competitive advantage. The technologists have been in the ascendancy because of the inexcusable ignorance of senior management of the real value of the technology (that is, its outputs). For over twenty years I have been publishing my view that information is of greater value than technology in the IT equation. 1, 2, 3 In the near future, Australian business leaders will hopefully recognise that technology is merely a delivery mechanism.
Despite the scenario painted at the start of this chapter, it is nonsense to suggest that technology will be one of the key drivers of tomorrow's economy. Everybody will have it and if they do not use it they will not survive. It will be a given. It will be knowledge that will provide sustainable competitive advantage, and knowledge is the capital of people.
In the workplace of the future the most important ingredients will be people and knowledge. The technologies that are mesmerising us today will be recognised for what they really are - the embedded tools for doing business.
There has also been a mistaken emphasis on information overload as one of the key problems of the future . It is not, however, the sheer volume of information that will create the difficulties. Rather, it is the failure to develop technology-based knowledge interpreters to distill the knowledge we want (and perhaps need) from the morass of irrelevancy.
As stated earlier, it is the changes to the interactions between leaders and followers and changes to the situation that will shape leadership in the 21st century. So, let us look at the changes we are likely to see in this century to not only the players in the leadership process, but also the leadership process itself. In particular, this section will deal with changes for leaders and followers, to the situation and to the leadership process.
The networked leader
The globalised, networked environment will create a demand for new or enhanced skills from leaders. Negotiation and conflict resolution will take on new dimensions. For example, think of the difficulty of trying to resolve the conflicting demands of employees who live and work in vastly different cultures and environments, and then doing this in a virtual context. Getting a group of people in a room and resolving their problems is a different proposition from getting people on e-mail, perhaps from different countries, languages and time-zones to 'have a talk about the matter'. There are many businesses today that operate in a diversity of environments, but the critical difference is the virtual nature of the context.
In a networked world, leaders will also need the ability to stay interconnected. On-line real-time communications will tend to result in much faster decision making because all the players can be involved simultaneously. If leaders do not stay interconnected and part of the loop they will find out what is going on only after things have happened.
The learning leader
The late 20th century saw the introduction of the concept of the learning organisation. These are 'organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured , where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.' 4 There is no doubt this will remain a central factor in organisational success in the current century.
A critical factor for leaders will be not so much what they know as how quickly they can learn. They will also need to have the ability to readily access the right information, and demonstrate a high degree of flexibility and adaptability in dealing with both technology and people.
The communicating leader
The communication skills of leaders will need to be even stronger in the future. Communicating with stakeholders takes on a new dimension in the networked world, as does seeking input from employees. Inspiring a team in Australia is not the same challenge as inspiring a team made up of Australians, Japanese, and Russians who are located all over the globe. The hard-nosed, top-down directive must be replaced with a more flexible, empathetic approach, still keeping to the core values of the organisation and the goals established.
Formulating and communicating vision, so essential for effective leadership and inspiring the troops, will require great skill if it is to be effectively articulated to a group with diverse interests, backgrounds and situations. Leaders in Australia will also value language skills, not just because of their communication benefits, but because of their importance in understanding other cultures.
Leadership diversity
In Australia it is inevitable that more women will become leaders. At the present they are one of our most underutilised resources. As a consequence, the type of leadership we have experienced in Australia will also change. Women often bring different attitudes and skills, and a different set of values to leadership. I emphasise 'often', as this very much depends upon the individual, and 'different', as there is no suggestion of better or worse.
In relation to the issue of women in leadership there are several strands of thought. One is that women, by their very gender, bring to their task qualities that men lack. This includes attributes such as collaboration, affiliation, intuition, and nurturing, all of which are particularly relevant to people relationships (and hence leadership). Those who favour this line of thought argue that women tend to be more participatory in their leadership style and more caring of their followers. It is also claimed that women are better right-brain thinkers and hence more creative and flexible than men.
Like all generalisations there are exceptions, and the opponents of the foregoing view use these to support their line of argument that both sexes have a masculine and feminine side to their nature, which is reflected in their leadership style. What needs to be done is to create a climate in the organisation in which everyone feels free to express these characteristics.
A third point of view is the converse proposition, that women are capable of exhibiting 'masculine' qualities ('look like a lady; act like a man'; the 'she-male'). Margaret Thatcher is given as the supreme example.
Yet another view is that there is no evidence that male and female qualities exist at all!
Be that as it may, in Australia we will see the emergence of more women leaders. The nature of followers will change in the 21st century (as discussed later) and as a result the sorts of characteristics described above as 'female' will become more important for effective leadership (irrespective of gender). We will see more 'look like a lady, act like a lady' and more 'look like a man, act like a lady'. This is not to suggest an androgynous approach, but rather an appreciation of the differences. This will require people in power, who at the moment are mostly men who tend to promote people most like themselves, to 'open their minds' to the changes that are taking place.
As perception is a critical feature of leadership, the mere increase in the proportion of women in leadership roles will bring about significant change to the generally macho Australian leadership context.
Since the Second World War Australia has become the world's most ethnically diverse nation. In the current century this aspect will increasingly be reflected in the ranks of leaders and, more importantly, in changes in the leadership process itself, mainly through cultural influences.
In addition, the networked world offers the opportunity of gender-free and racially-free virtual communication (as opposed to face-to-face communication). This will provide a working environment with a greater focus on what is done rather than who might do it.
Leaders driving change
As leadership is essentially about creating change, the new economy will require much more sensitivity to the change process. In the past decade we have seen two very different approaches to change management. One approach is to place emphasis on economic value as the driver of the change process. This involves drastic staff reductions, downsizing, closing businesses and generally focusing on the bottom line (in Australia in the 90's this was epitomised by what came to be known as the Chainsaw Dunlap approach to business).
The alternative approach that we have experienced in Australia concentrates on changing organisational capacity. This method concentrates on changing corporate culture (for example, employee behaviours, attitudes, capabilities and commitment). 5
Leaders in 21st century will have to combine these approaches, rather than seeing them as alternatives, if they are to generate the level of radical change needed to transform businesses in the networked world.
New leadership models
The knowledge economy will undoubtedly generate not only new businesses but also new business models. These will be both economic models and organisational models. New models, and the change that drives them, will require new forms of leadership.
John Kotter (Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School) has proposed a model ("5 Degrees of Change" 6) that describes the type of leadership necessary for an organisation, dependent upon the type and degree of change the organisation is undergoing.
| Degree 1 | Little change (making goods and services with long product lives). |
| Degree 2 | Continuous improvement (constant incremental changes in products and ways of operating). |
| Degree 3 | Non-incremental change within business (Degree 2 plus regularly introducing new product lines/services and improvements) |
| Degree 4 | Whole new businesses (Degrees 2 and 3 plus inventing whole new businesses as well as new product lines/services). |
| Degree 5 | Whole new business model (Degrees 2, 3 and 4 plus inventing new economic and organizational models). |
Different types of leadership are required to successfully deal with these degrees of change:
| Degrees 1-5 | Require excellent basic management. |
| Degrees 3-5 | Require visionary leadership (plus basic management). |
| Degrees 4-5 | Require energy-unleashing leadership (plus visionary and basic management). |
Degrees 4 & 5 will be the new business paradigm in the 21st century because of the rapid rate of change to the economy, demand, ways of doing business, and so on. Therefore, companies that are able to operate at levels 4 & 5 will be the success stories.
To invent new economic and organisational models requires enormous energy and energy-unleashing leadership. Extraordinary leadership is required in order to tap deeply into and harness people's hopes and dreams, their most basic human values and need for a meaningful life. To achieve exceptional and bold group goals, the energy-unleashing leader must be adept at role modelling and connecting with the psyche of followers in order to release their great passion and creative power.
With this model, Kotter is suggesting that winning in the new economy will require a very strong form of transformational leadership. 'Doing what is right' will be the guiding principal of energy-unleashing leadership. It will appeal to very basic human values, to that which we all share regardless of educational background, nationality, religion, or race. This includes our desire for security for self and family, love, respect, opportunities to grow and a sense of purpose in our lives. The talk goes beyond what we do (strategies) or how we do things (rules) to who we are.
The energy-unleashing leader will need to set what Kotter speaks of as 'tough new goals'. If the goals are not visionary enough, or not challenging enough, there is no hope of "unleashing energy". This is similar to an earlier concept of BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) 7. A BHAG is a clarion call to arms - it sets such a challenging goal that it provides the leader with an opportunity to create great enthusiasm and commitment. BHAGs are huge, daunting challenges. Consider the BHAG issued by US President Kennedy in 1961: 'This Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth'. Another example was Henry Ford's BHAG 'to democratise the automobile'. This helped Ford emerge from the ruck of a number of then competing companies to become dominant in the car industry. In the 21st century, tough goals and BHAGS will be crucial for leaders who wish to succeed.
At the start of the new millennium, many regard emotional
intelligence as the sine qua non of leadership success. 8,
9 This century will require even greater development of the
attributes of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social
skill. It is not hard to imagine Kotter's energy-unleashing leadership drawing
heavily on these components.
You can't have leadership without followers. In the 21st century the changes in the way we do work and business, and the effect this has on the followers, will also change the way we must lead.
Occupations of the future
It is often said that 50% of the jobs that will exist in the 21st century have not yet been conceived. So whilst it is rather difficult to define the specifics, we do know that the majority of the new occupations will be knowledge based. It has been suggested that we will see titles such as Director of Intellectual Capital, Data Mining Officer, Chief Futurist, Talent Manager, Retention Manager, Chief Evangelist, Manager for Diversity, Director of People, and so on. It has also been predicted that in ten years no one will be called accountant - instead we will have 'resource allocation advisers'. 10
Whilst we may read these sorts of predictions with a jaundiced eye, thinking about the number of jobs that exist today that did not exist even 50 years ago puts the scenario into perspective. For example, KPMG already have a Chief Knowledge Officer. Other existing titles are Chief Growth Officer, Creatologist, Culture Team Leader, Messaging Champion, Apostle of Partners. 11 I recently saw a job application from someone who had created his own company some years before - his title was Chief Visionary.
The following ad appeared in the Financial Review in 1998. 12
| Chief Knowledge Director - harness, guide and develop knowledge as a strategic business differentiator, and establish it as a core corporate value. Responsible for the design, implementation and leadership of the knowledge process and content, you will work closely with IT and HR to establish a knowledge culture throughout Australia. This is about leveraging structured knowledge as a key enabler, and its conversion to strategic business opportunities. As a knowledge professional with an inspired leadership and team building style, you clearly understand knowledge as an asset to strategic business. |
The new work paradigm
New workforce dynamics in the 21st century, many of which began in the 1990's, will provide great challenges for leaders.
The current trend of substantial growth in the casual and part-time workforce (as opposed to the full-time sector) will certainly continue. In addition, the very nature of knowledge work will create knowledge workers. For these people their intellectual skills and knowledge will be their revenue stream and so they will be constantly seeking to optimise that return. They will, therefore, become more itinerant and work as contractors, experts, consultants, part-timers, casuals, joint-venture partners and so on.
Today part of the persona of the individual is based on who you work for. In the future it is more likely to be what knowledge area you work in. So, it will not be who do you work for? but instead, what do you know?
This will have a significant impact on the affinity between the person and the organisation. Leadership often uses organisational attributes such as loyalty, organisational culture, and the corporate image to engender commitment. Visions are often organisationally based. The organisation is often the glue in the process. Leaders will have to learn to do without these factors.
There will be a move away from the current emphasis on teams towards more one-to-one relationships. And the networked relationships will create new complexities for leaders.
Several changes in jobs throughout a lifetime will not only create a new type of worker, it will also create new demands by the worker for increased career support services such as lifelong learning. Constant training, retraining, job changing and career changes will become the norm in the 21st century. The Field Marshal's baton in the knapsack will probably remain the only example (outside of the Church) of a 'job for life'.
There will be many more intrapreneurs (that is, those with entrepreneurial skills operating within the structure of larger organisations). This will be the result of businesses operating in a global marketplace seeking more highly educated and motivated staff, and generating opportunities and challenges that require innovation at all levels.
Workers will have a much greater commitment to family life and need for lifelong learning (as discussed later). Consequently, leaders will face the challenge of overcoming the tendency of recent years to expect employees to work longer hours (not shorter hours as promised by the seers at the end of the 20th century).
The concept of stakeholders will undergo a major rethink in terms of employees of knowledge-based businesses. Today we see the shareholders as the owners of the business and the major stakeholders. Employees are also seen as stakeholders, but ones that can be fairly easily replaced. Employee stakeholders who leave the production line at GM, for example, are easily replaced. The knowledge worker who has just created a brilliant piece of software, however, cannot be easily replaced if he or she walks out the virtual door.
Aging population
One of the biggest impacts on both business and the wider community will be the demographic change predicted for the first half of the century. This should not be underestimated and could well be one of the defining issues of the 21st century.
Peter Drucker believes that 'the countries of the developed world are in the process of committing collective suicide.' 13 For example, in Greece, Portugal, and Spain the reproduction rate is already less than half that needed to maintain the population.
Consider the following extrapolations of current trends:
With life expectancy increasing and fertility rates decreasing, the population in the developed nations is already rapidly aging. The mix between younger people of prime working age and older people will deteriorate about twice as fast as the drop in population. The economic impact is obvious, with fewer and fewer in the workforce supporting more and more who are no longer able to work or contribute economically. It also means that economic growth can no longer come from workforce growth, it must come from productivity improvements.
Fortunately, the knowledge economy will provide a countervailing force. Knowledge based jobs are not necessarily age sensitive in either content or physical capacity. People will be able to remain productive members of the workforce for much longer if they so wish. In fact, we are likely to see retirement ages blow out to 75 years old.
Cultural diversity
Leaders in business will be dealing with a workforce of vastly
different skills, both in their disciplines and their levels, and with much
greater cultural diversity. It should be recognised that whilst Australia prides
itself on being one of the world's most culturally diverse nations, dealing
with cultural diversity in a domestic environment is vastly different to dealing
with such diversity in a number of foreign countries, and in real time mode.
The boundary-less company will become a reality in the 21st century. Barriers between functions, people, countries, suppliers and customers, and between levels in the hierarchy will disappear or be pushed aside. This will be fuelled by the convergence of technologies and the globalisation of business.
The global business
In an increasingly global world, in which size or critical mass will become more important, there will be a move away from partnerships towards corporate structures in the major professional fields of accounting, law, management consulting, engineering, medical services, and similar activities.
Market forces will continue to drive change, but leaders will have to cope with a market which is global on the one hand but multi-domestic on the other (that is, offering products or services in a variety of countries and cultures). There will be many 'right' ways to do things. Interdependency will increase between teams, as few individuals will be capable of doing or knowing it all.
Without superb management and inspired leadership the likely result is chaos, but of course the true leader thrives on chaos and hence great opportunities will present themselves.
The organisation, the individual and beyond
In a knowledge economy, people and knowledge are the principal assets. So there will be far more attention paid to these aspects than to structures. Leaders will have to devote a lot more attention to the more intangible aspects of the human condition such as emotion, attitudes, beliefs, community involvement, social cohesion, and so on. To be truly successful leaders will have to establish a seamless union of organisational and individual values.
In the same context, concern will need to be extended beyond the employee to the spouse and children. People, in a search for a more balanced lifestyle, will have a different set of priorities to their forebears, conditioned not only by economic factors but also by societal change.
Cultural capital will become the focus of leadership. It will reflect the importance of people and knowledge. Leaders will need to be much more sensitive to human, psychological, cultural and family issues.
It will be necessary to adopt a much more comprehensive understanding of the overall environment and to appreciate that the expectations, needs and wants of the 21st century man and woman will be very different from those of their 20th century counterparts.
The information and knowledge network
There will be a significant shift in the nature of information. Today most of the information in a firm concerns internal operations, reports on events and activities, progress reports, financial reports and so on. In a much more turbulent and global economy, there will be a need for much more information on external events and conditions. Leaders will need to understand more about what is going on outside the firm to be successful. They will be faced with obtaining the best results from their knowledge resources in a global marketplace. They will have to cope with sudden shifts in their competition. This will require rigorous methods of gathering and analysing information from a multiplicity of sources with limited time to respond.
Knowledge is mobile. In a manufacturing economy the means of production is owned by the firm. In the knowledge economy the means of production is owned (if not in a legal, then at least in a practical sense) by the individuals - when they move, the production line moves with them. Leaders will face a new set of risks that do not exist with most businesses today, except perhaps with key employees.
One of the functions of leaders is to act as the public face of the business. In the networked world there is going to be much less corporate privacy. It will be more difficult to control the public image. Leaders will have to cope with a more transparent environment where company operations are more open to the public gaze than they have been to date. Leaders will have to learn to turn this increased visibility into an advantage rather than a disadvantage. This will entail using feedback as a mechanism to respond positively to events whether they are favourable or not, and using these opportunities to influence events they can no longer control.
New economy opportunities
In the next century, leaders will be much keener to embrace
what has been called the 'Genius of the AND' and shake off the oppression of
the 'Tyranny of the OR'. 14
Leaders will recognise that the networked world provides the flexibility to
pursue seemingly opposing or contradictory goals: to have both stability AND
change; to be both conservative AND bold; to have both low cost AND high quality;
and to produce short-term results AND have a long-term strategy. This liberation
will give leaders even more opportunity to create change, to challenge the status
quo, and to adopt visionary goals.
Despite all of these changes, many aspects of leadership will remain constant. As in the past, leadership will remain a process of:
The new environment, however, will impose new demands on
the leadership process:
What do we in Australia need to do today to ensure our leaders of tomorrow are equipped for success in the networked world? The first thing is to raise the profile and understanding of leadership as the key ingredient for success. Secondly, leadership must be recognised as more important than management. And thirdly, the difference between the two has to be clearly understood. How will we achieve this? A critical factor will be education.
At the start of the new millennium, there are too many capable people leaving Australia and seeking greener pastures overseas. There are a number of reasons for this, and it is having a debilitating effect not only on business, but also in our universities, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to retain and attract quality staff.
One of the saddest aspects of the very recent years in this country has been the dramatic decline in the field of tertiary education, when Australia is compared to the rest of the world. It will require very strong leadership in the 21st century to reverse this decline and lift our investment in education, particularly at the tertiary level, to the point where we are globally competitive with the best in the world. Leaders in all walks of life must realise just how central this is to the future of the nation. Second-rate education will produce second-rate leaders.
Education for the knowledge economy
Currently the competitive edge for developed economies is knowledge work and workers. The economic realities of global competition mean that there is little option for Australian society but to build on our competitive strength in the area of knowledge work to sustain living standards. The social environment, however, is clearly more complex and diverse than we have previously experienced. There is the danger of a substantial 'underclass' developing, with limited opportunities to contribute to and benefit from modern society.
There is a need to recognise the new capabilities presented by information and communications technology. The new technologies, however, offer limited help in developing the key attributes that business seeks in graduates (that is, communication and interpersonal skills, decision making and problem solving skills, knowledge of work and careers). These can only be developed effectively through a process where social and workplace experiences are interwoven with the learning process. That learning process does not stop with an undergraduate degree but continues throughout much of the graduate's career.
Increasingly, higher education will be called upon to assist with the career-long accumulation of specialised knowledge and skills. Post-graduate study (both award and non-award), often workplace-based, is likely to be much more in demand from individuals and businesses as we move forward.
In a knowledge economy, education at all levels is important, but particularly post-secondary education. As a nation we cannot expect to be in a leadership position unless our higher education system provides the appropriate platform of skills to compete on a global basis.
Learning a new way of thinking
In the future our students will have to learn the importance of focussing much more on design than analysis. Currently students are encouraged to focus on analytical skills. At the moment, university education concentrates on the search for answers rather than the search for questions. An awful lot of time is spent drilling into our students the solutions, the right answers, the correct approach, the appropriate methodology, and not enough on teaching them to think, to question, or to search mind and conscience for the new and different.
Creativity and the ability to think outside the square are essential characteristics in the global economy. Competition is much fiercer and much more lethal than it was in the good old days. The past is going to be a much less useful frame of reference than it used to be, and certainly the benchmarks will be much more demanding.
In Australia we are a very risk averse society. Currently very few are teaching small business management and entrepreneurship - this will become the norm because the new economy will require a much higher level of risk acceptance.
In recent years in Australia there has been a strong movement towards measuring competencies in relation to job performance. In essence this is a concentration on how well one can actually carry out a task rather than what is understood about the task. All well and good at some levels, but certainly out of place at university level, despite the proponents arguing otherwise. Pushing the forefront of knowledge requires understanding, not just competency in doing.
Learning new strategies
We will also need to direct attention to the creation of value. The systems and products of the new economy will have to pass a much more stringent test of adding value than hitherto, when perhaps just adding revenue was enough. The competitive advantages of the past such as low cost, better quality, or better distribution are going to be displaced by the need for much stronger value creation by way of integrated values. Consumers will be looking for products and services to include all the benefits, not just some of them.
There will need to be a much stronger focus on externals to the firm rather than internals. Strategy should always be about what one's competitors are going to do rather than, as it often is currently, what can be done internally to reduce costs, expand markets, increase sales, and so on. The threats will constantly arise in a rapidly changing environment in which there will just be the quick and the dead.
Complexity has been a feature of business in the past and this will have to be replaced by simplicity. How many people can use 100% of the features on their VCR? In tomorrow's economy such a product is dead. Someone said every university should have a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Institute to instill in students that unless the product or service can pass the KISS test in the market place it will not compete.
Education for 21st century business
Business will become increasingly demanding of what it wants from higher education. It will want to see much more relevance in what universities are proposing to deliver and that what is being delivered is of the highest quality. Business will also expect higher education to see it as an equal partner in deciding what will be delivered and how. Universities, particularly, will have to reassess many of their attitudes to both education and business to effectively meet these demands.
Research undertaken for the Business/Higher Education Round Table 15, 16 (BHERT) points to the following characteristics of future demand for higher education:
These outcomes will require:
BHERT's research was recognised and reinforced by an OECD review of tertiary education in Australia.
| … The changing employment market is not leading to a greater demand for narrowly trained specialists but for graduates who can think for themselves, communicate, empathise and work with others, invent solutions and create new possibilities. 17 |
Learning to be leaders
Finally, and as stated earlier, to meet the needs of the future, there will need to be a long overdue focus on leadership rather than management. This applies particularly in Australia where there has been precious little attention paid to leadership in the Schools of Management. Schools, departments, and faculties of management abound, as do Professors of Management. On the other hand, there are no schools, departments or faculties of leadership. There is only a handful of Professors of Leadership, and similarly there is a dearth of leadership taught in most universities. In the United States, on the other hand, leading business schools such as Harvard have had Professors of Leadership for decades.
In the 21st century there will be many more firsts in senior leadership roles in Australia than there were in the past century. We will see our first woman Prime Minister, more women in parliament, more women CEO's, our first ethnic Asian State Premier, our first woman President. For far too long, Australia has clung to its traditional WASP heritage. One only has to look around at government, business, professional associations, community groups and political parties to see the exclusivity of our leaders.
A sad commentary on our past sectarian hang-ups occurred when I was elected as Federal President of the Liberal Party. The first question I was asked by the press was whether I was aware that I was the first Catholic elected to that position. I was not aware of this fact, and to this day have never bothered to check it (although apparently it was true). My response was that I did not care, and it was as relevant as my shoe size. That was Australia in 1990. It has to change. It will change.
There will be far less concern with gender, religion, race, or age in an environment which is global, neutral, virtual and instant. However, people will still be people. They will still need leadership to fulfill their dreams, to realise their ambitions, to achieve their goals. They will still need leaders to inspire them to previously unreachable heights. Those leaders will themselves need to scale news heights. To scale these heights leaders will need the energy-unleashing leadership discussed above, together with visions that are BHAGs.
One lesson we should have learned from the Olympic Games is that PBs (personal bests) are no longer good enough. Leaders will have to set goals based not on historical achievements, but on the best in the world. It is no longer good enough to do 50% better than last year, if that will only win the silver medal.
Whatever changes we see in leadership, be it in the 21st or the 31st century, there will always be one essential unchangeable ingredient, and that is integrity. As Dwight Eisenhower said:
In order to be a leader a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence the supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is a section gang, on a football field, in an army, or in an office. If a man's associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore is integrity and high purpose.
Bennis, W G (1989); On Becoming a Leader, Addison-Wesley, Mass.
Collins, J C & Porras, J I (1994): Built To Last-Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Century, London
Conger, J A, & Kanungo, R N (1988): Charismatic Leadership: The Elusive Factor in Organisational Effectiveness, Jossey-Bass,San Francisco
Goleman, Daniel (1998): Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bantam
Kotter, John (2001): Kotter's Point of View: 5 Degrees of Change-Leadership and Change, http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/kotter
Kouzes, James M. & Posner, Barry Z. (1995): The Leadership Challenge-How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organisations, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.
http://www.strategy-business.com
Harvard Business Review
Phillips, Donald T (1992): Lincoln on Leadership, Warner Books, N.Y.
Powell, Colin L (1995): A Soldier's Way, Hutchinson, London
Senge, Peter M (1993): The Fifth Discipline; The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation
© 2002 Australian Institute of Management