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Precisely at the time when quality executive leadership has never been more important to the viability of the modern Enterprise, shifting demographics alone are shrinking the leadership talent pool and creating a fierce War For Talent that will breach new and worrying levels of severity.  In fact, it’s been happening for the last few years and generational change is only the beginning of this Perfect Storm.  Modern and future leaders (now increasingly a mix of Gen X and Y) will become very thin-on-the-ground as the speed and complexity of the modern leadership remit means companies simply can’t produce leaders quickly enough – executive leadership is a hard job getting harder! 

This Perfect Storm includes and is not limited to the following mega-trends that are redefining the corporate landscape:  globalisation; the requirement for genuine customer centricity; social media; The Internet Of Everything; better/faster/cheaper competition coming from anywhere; international labour arbitrage; cloud-based everything; the requirement to ‘digitise’ the Enterprise; the rise of China and all its complexities; the need for wholesale organisational redesign; and much more…

So I thought it important to examine and table the latest trends and research into what is considered the competency profile of this modern, future leader capable of guiding the Enterprise safely through these stormy waters.  I’ve drawn on many of the latest leadership publications and forums including The Australian Financial Review Business Summit 2016 and the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report (7,000 respondents from over 130 countries) and supplemented this with our daily work in the field as executive search practitioners. In profiling each of the competencies below, I’ve also shared some lines of interview questioning that may assist you in assessing whether individuals truly possess such competencies.  I welcome your thoughts as this is far from an exhaustive list but a useful starting block nonetheless. 

The leadership attributes required to navigate the Perfect Storm include but are not limited to the following:

• Digital Capability – With 7 billion mobile devices in the world now responsible for 40% of all internet traffic it goes without saying that the modern/future leader must be at the very forefront of the digital revolution, embracing all of its disruptive forces as an opportunity rather than a threat.  Suggested line of questioning: What is your definition of digital capability? What’s your view on where it will all end up and what have you done in your recent role/s to digitise the Enterprise?
• Adaptability & Agility  –  The modern/future leader should be able to predict trends before they arrive which is one way that even large organisations with large mass and less mobility can stay relevant and agile. They should be able to shed old paradigms of thought and ways of doing business as what worked yesterday is almost guaranteed to be just not good enough for today or tomorrow. Look no further than the impact of Uber and Airbnb on the traditional taxi and accommodation operators whose leaders lacked adaptability and agility and were resistant to change. Suggested line of questioning: How or where can you demonstrate that you’ve instilled adaptability and agility into the fabric and very DNA of the Enterprise? What were some of the biggest challenges along the way and how did you address them?  Where did you identify and act on the trends before your competitors and how did you capitalise on that advantage?  
• Speed Of Decision-Making – Modern/future leaders don’t just have to make the right decisions; they now have to make them at lightning speed. And by the way, doing nothing is no longer an option as that will simply guarantee failure faster. The speed of decision-making is ever-increasing so the modern/future leader should be able to think on their feet, process all the relevant information and make decisions quickly, relying on their trusted advisor network to provide the correct information.  Suggested line of questioning: How do you formulate your decision-making to ensure speed but not at the expense of quality? What checks and balances are put in place and when have you had to abandon this whole construct because the decision was required sooner? What were the risks in making that decision earlier and how did you justify that risk?    
• Curiosity – Curiosity intimates objectivity, respect for others’ views, and the ability/willingness to maintain an open mind. The modern/future leader must surely be open to all ideas, opinions and paradigms as competition now comes from any number of obvious and non-obvious sources and to lack a sense of curiosity is to miss out, sooner or later, on that next opportunity or threat.  Suggested line of questioning: From where do you source your market intelligence? How far and wide do you research the market to uncover some of your best ideas?
• Lack Of Ego – This was an interesting finding to come from these forums. Leaders with huge egos were tolerated and even fawned in the past but are now generally spurned and considered out of touch with the modern demands of corporate leadership, putting themselves ahead of others in effect with the modern corporation requiring much the reverse. No lines of questioning here as you’ll probably be able to identify the ego fairly quickly!
• Self-belief – By contrast, self-belief could be the new version of ego. These forums suggested that deep self-belief was required of modern/future leaders in order to come from nowhere and disrupt  a market, almost verging on arrogance.  Suggested line of questioning: What was the driving force behind your belief that you could disrupt the market in the fashion that you have? When did you have doubts about your ability to deliver and how did you overcome these doubts?
• Customer-centric – The modern/future leader must make the customer the final arbiter of everything because the customer is now well and truly king. Moreover, making the customer the centrepiece stops internal factionalism and rallies all employees to something that is bigger than any individual. Suggested line of questioning: How have you transformed your organisation into one that is truly customer-centric, across all people, process, technology and financial inputs, from strategy to ‘coal face’ execution?  What do you consider to be good measures of Customer Experience and how have you applied the learning’s from that intelligence gathering framework?
• Ability To Attract & Retain Good People  – It was unanimous that this attribute was key to any leader’s success – past, present or future.  With the War For Talent and the complexity of modern business making good people even more valuable and harder to find, it really is all about people, people and people!  This fundamental skill set has not changed and remains the hallmark of good management and leadership. Suggested line of questioning: Can you share with us your philosophy and framework of how you attract and retain great people? What are the key attributes you seek in people who will go the journey?
• Ability To Balance Short & Longer Term Interests – I found much criticism of the need to deliver short term results and survive the blowtorch of investors but that’s the reality of the modern corporation and modern/future leaders must be able to deliver quick wins whilst still establishing strong foundations for the longer term good of the Enterprise. This tough balancing act is a rare and valuable skill set indeed and important to identify in an interview situation.  Suggested line of questioning: When were you forced to make decisions to satisfy short term interests which you believed would compromise longer term imperatives of the Enterprise? What did you do? How did you manage to balance the competing stakeholder interests and reach an amicable solution?  
• Willingness To Embrace Failure  – We’ve seen that Silicon Valley actually rewards and encourages failure and it is this mindset that is required of our modern/future leaders.  Conservatism will generally not protect the long term viability of any corporation as good ideas now appear to originate as commonly from left-field thinking and non-obvious sources. Suggested line of questioning: When have you clearly failed in the past? What did you learn from that experience? How do you define failure now?
• Ability To Apply Systems Thinking & Drive Organisational Redesign – The digital economy now requires companies to undergo wholesale transformation and complete organisational redesign, from traditional, functional models towards constructs that support interconnected, flexible teams. The new “Social Contract” between employers and workers means that our modern/future leaders must create corporate biomes for rapid career growth, a compelling and flexible workplace and a sense of mission and purpose at work. One forum likened modern businesses  to Hollywood movie production teams with people coming together to tackle projects, then disbanding and moving on to new assignments once the project is complete. Suggested line of questioning: If starting with a blank sheet of paper, what should the modern org. chart look like in respect of the pressures now being forced onto the Enterprise to digitise? To what degree will cognitive computing and other smart technologies eliminate jobs, create new jobs, change the nature of work and disrupt the workforce in your sector?

The leadership attributes required to successfully navigate the Enterprise through unchartered waters of international, technological, cross-cultural  and demographic complexity now form a very long list that is growing longer by the day.  I’m confident I’ve addressed only a fraction of these attributes and would welcome any further additions to this list.

Over a career spanning 22 years, Greg Tanna has established himself as an executive recruitment leader in the supply of highly specialised executive talent to the Australian and broader Asian markets in the domain of Customer Interaction Management across BPO, ICT, Sales, Service, Analytics & Consulting sectors.