Many corporate leaders
and leadership styles revered during recent decades were passing fads. Anachronisms in a fast-changing
world, they offer nothing for 21st-century leaders. Many of the companies these
so-called leaders set out to build or rebuild – and often wrote about in
best-selling books – have either vanished or lost their luster.
Yet the "leadership
industry" still churns out an avalanche of books, magazines, journals, and
consultancy white papers on leadership. Sadly, they tend to offer a confusing mishmash of academic
notions rather than real-world, actionable prescriptions. And they often are
contradictory to the new leadership challenges of the 21st century.
As well, academia
constantly trots out lists of leadership traits, styles, and behaviors. Such lists have not changed over the
millennia. Leadership is discussed throughout history – in the earliest Chinese
literature, by Homer and Plato, in the Bible, and from Machiavelli on down to
Thomas Jefferson – never mind modern-day business schools.
Such leadership
characteristics are "givens." They are the common sense foundations upon which the
character of leadership is based. Everybody expects leaders to be ethical and
competent. And even exemplary character and general competency does not
necessarily make an executive successful in leading organizational progress and
success. Other, distinctly-futuristic elements are required, in harmony with
global trends.
The globalization of
commerce will continue to intensify with – and be impacted by – several major
trends. These
include:
- the inexorable spread of the Internet;
- the embracing of the WTO;
- the US-dollarization of economies;
- growing environmental challenges;
- maturing political and legal systems; and
- socio-cultural clashes across the global village.
These trends reflect a
dynamically-changing risk-reward marketplace. Companies must operate in real time, not only across
invisible borders using common technology platforms and currency, but also
across cultures, customs, and political systems. Globalization demands a new
brand of leadership that is dynamically networked across the company and that
is in league with the future. |