Adaptive to Change:


Developing the Skill Set of Tomorrow's Leaders
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What can an individual do to prepare for the leadership ranks? Learn to see the business as a whole. Learning to see how results emerge from a complex set of interactions, rather than small sets of causes and effects, is a critical skill for tomorrow's leader. Reducing waste resulting from local optimization improves the pace at which the organization can respond. This also helps the leader recognize how and when to improvise so the organization can reach its goals. Peter Senge, in his book, The Fifth Discipline, has detailed information about how to learn to see the whole over the parts.

With the decentralization of authority, a business becomes a network of promises and understanding. Learning to effectively make and solicit promises is a key success criterion for tomorrow's leaders. To promise is to reliably secure and maintain commitments. A promise has three critical parts:

  • Sincere intention: If an individual had no intention of completing a task, there was never a promise.
  • Sense of accountability: The individual needs to be accountable to the stakeholders and him or herself to perform the task.
  • Competence: The individual must have the resources, time, and knowledge to keep the promise.
The old ways, having top decision makers as the keepers of accountability, do not work in this age of decentralization and rapid change. To create lasting change, the leaders of tomorrow will have to understand how to manage the business as a network of understanding and commitments. Hal Macomber, in his writings on project management, has detailed descriptions about learning to make and manage commitments.

Finally, the individual who learns to have effective, interactive communications will position themselves for upward movement in any organization. One of the continual challenges we face is being able to generate meaning in others that ensures we get the responses we want. The ability to listen to another's view, and to communicate critical meaning in a way to achieve mutual understanding, is a critical and learnable skill. Dr. Matthew Budd, in You Are What You Say, communicates a different approach to listening and communication, greatly improving your effectiveness as a leader.

Previously we stated the three main reasons catalyzing the need for new leaders to have adaptive skills were the speed of change, the ability to execute meaningful change, and the difficulty in having effective communications. If individuals learn to see the whole, reliably obtain and deliver promises, and take initiative to develop interactive communication skills, they are preparing themselves for leadership in the 21st century.

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Pete Blazek and Dennis Stevens lead Synaptus, a consulting firm that helps executives improve business performance by connecting strategy to execution. For more information, please visit www.synaptus.com.