Most of today’s leaders honed their leadership skills in the rugged economic environment of the badlands during the last 15 years, thinking their success prepared them for the future. But once again, they are traveling outside their comfort zone in a new global context that demands a rapid reaction.
Here are seven steps to thrive in the next decade:
1. Expect to experience fear and a sense of personal inadequacy. Your once-successful habits and intuition no longer apply in this new landscape. This means having the courage to change on deep, personal levels and exposing your vulnerability is a tremendous asset. You must use the alchemy of the experience to create, define and redefine your character.
2. Don’t get lost in familiar territory. As a successful leader you have “competency addictions” — the mindless, automatic repetition of legacy mindsets and behaviors that you will resort to particularly when you experience sudden pressures from a new technology, new competitor or change in customer preferences. Rather than feeling threatened and triggered to fall back on the old ways, use it to innovate.
3. Avoid ugly surprises. Only those leaders who don’t anticipate the future will be surprised by it. Understanding the big picture and good peripheral vision are not optional. What are the threats, real or imagined, lurking ahead for you? Hold sessions with trusted colleagues and practice resolving the events before you meet them in the rough landscape ahead.
4. Simplify complexity. This is a complex environment that will prove fatal to simplistic thinkers and those seduced by glib slogans. The trick is to be able to think and manage complexity, break it down into its component parts, and communicate direction in clear, simple terms.
5. Avoid the black hole of ignorance. Getting blindsided by denying the existence of what you don’t know is a pitfall along the journey. Seek collisions at all times to fill in this black hole of ignorance.
6. Seed an epidemic of innovation. Top leadership must respond to the radical innovation imperative of this environment. Power will ultimately come from mastering disruptive innovations in the marketplace.
7. Create meaning. The changes currently underway in the economy and social institutions of the global society challenge assumptions about who we are, what we do and the value we offer, which can be profoundly disorienting. Leaders create meaning continuously. Meaning lives in the hearts and minds of people, not in emails or strategic plans or organizational charts.\
How well will you use the alchemy of this journey to lead yourself and others to move on despite the uncertainty of this forbidding terrain?
