To successfully develop this combination of skills and qualities – and adopt what is, in effect, a ‘post-heroic’ leadership style – they may need to abandon much of the thinking and behaviour that propelled them to the top of their organisations in the first place.
But if they want their businesses to survive and thrive over the next two decades they have no choice. Unless they dramatically change their leadership style, starting from today, their organisations will lose out in the race for innovation, the march to globalisation and the war for talent.
They will be, quite simply, unsustainable.
Leadership skills must evolve
This is the conclusion Hay Group has reached after working with Germany-based foresight company Z-Punkt to identify the megatrends they believe will affect organisations and their leaders profoundly over the coming decades and analysing the implications of each at a corporate, organisational, team and individual level.
Megatrends are long-term processes of transformation on a global scale with a broad scope and dramatic impact.
They can be observed over decades and can be projected with a high degree of probability at least 15 years into the future. They affect all regions and stakeholders, including governments, businesses and individuals. And they transform economies, societies and policies at a fundamental level.
Global megatrends forcing change
The six megatrends Hay Group singled out are:
- Accelerating globalisation (‘globalisation 2.0’)
- Climate change, its environmental impact and scarcity of resources
- Demographic change
- Individualisation and values pluralism
- Increasingly digital lifestyles
- Technology convergence.
Several of these have already been researched intensively. But they have not, until now, been researched in the context of leadership. Nor have these six particular megatrends ever been investigated in one single piece of research.
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Do you think HayGroup have identified the right global megatrends in this report? Are there any other trends that should be considered? Use the comments section below to share your ideas.
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