Global Leadership The Next Generation

Based on the findings of a multi-year study sponsored by the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, Global Leadership: The Next Generation systematically identifies what tomorrow's global leaders will need to know, do, and believe -- and shows emerging leaders how to deepen the skills and values they'll need to succeed at the highest levels. World-renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith and co-authors Cathy L. Greenberg, Alastair Robertson, and Maya Hu-Chan uncover tomorrow's new "factors of leadership": global thinking, appreciation of diversity, technological savvy, willingness to partner, and openness to sharing leadership. Book jacket.

Global Leadership: The Next Generation is a summary of two years of knowledge acquisition, research, and interviews sponsored by Accenture and concluded in partnership with Marshall Goldsmith and his colleagues in the Alliance for Strategic Leadership. This book also builds upon valuable contributions by Warren Bennis and John O'Neil. This book is unique. Instead of interviewing current CEOs and executives (who will not be running the organizations of the future), we interviewed future CEOs and executives who will be running the organizations of the future. What lies within these pages is written from the point of view of the next generation of global leaders. Accenture sponsored thought leader panels and focus and dialogue groups with high-potential leaders from around the world. In addition to these groups, more than 200 specially selected high-potential leaders from 120 international companies were interviewed in great depth. Since each company could nominate no more than two future leaders, these were some of the highest potential leaders in the world! Over three-fifths of these future leaders were under the age of 40, and more than a third were in their 20s. It is from research that the Global Leader of the Future Inventory, the basis for the chapters and sections of this book, was developed. Leadership Can Be Learned There has been an unprecedented surge of interest in business leadership in recent years, particularly in the qualities that the effective leader should possess now and in the future. With the shape of companies and the style of operation changing so fast, there is a natural concern that current leadership standards and styles are not keeping pace and will be still further behind in years to come. In markets of all sorts, leadership is getting tougher, particularly at the top: corporations grow in size and complexity; competition becomes ever sharper and stakeholders, more demanding. Perhaps in consequence, leaders are staying in the top jobs for shorter and shorter periods. In some sectors, average tenures have halved over the past decade, perhaps due to stress, challenges, politics, health, or other reasons. In the business context, the interaction between leader and led makes each combination unique. A simplistic, one-size-fits-all prescription can sometimes be valueless. But leadership can be learned, so we decided to conduct wide-ranging research to identify the many competencies, values, and characteristics that leaders and potential leaders must develop to meet not just present challenges, but the rather larger ones posed by the far-reaching changes expected in future corporate structures. Development lead times imply that companies must start the process right now if they are to be successful in developing the next generation of global leaders. Many factors are transforming the context of leadership today: globalization and technological change lead to heightened competition, which in turn leads to new organizational models. Boundary integration, the result of alliances and mergers, technology, and globalization, as well as the emergence of a knowledge-based workforce so varied and different from its predecessors, place a relentless emphasis on innovation, adaptability, and collaboration. Information technology offers new working practices, but demands new strategies. These chaotic changes are leading to an ever-more complex business environment, full of leadership challenges. Because no individual is likely to embody all of the needed and critical capabilities, and because the very nature of business organization--merged, allianced, outsourced, and virtual--is beginning to dictate it, shared leadership is expected to gain preeminence as the operating model of the future. In the future, there will be fewer "all-knowing" CEOs; instead, leadership will be widely shared in executive teams. New demands for collective responsibility a