21st Century "Renaissance Leaders"

Here is the last of a series of posts, started in November that talks about the kind of leaders that we need now and in the future...

How will a 21st Century Leader operate differently?

They will “flow,” moving from one role to another swiftly, easily and without changing their course. After a challenge is overcome or particular phase of work is complete, they will resume the appropriate role without fanfare or discontinuity.

They will “team” to lead. They will know when to tap others and shift power and leadership to others. They recognize the inherent value in the people of the team, harnessing the best of each person to maximize the results. They share responsibility, freely giving credit for success and knowingly accepting the burden of failure.

They will be “tele-present” and on-line. They will be skilled in the use of tools and technologies that allow them to lead and relate to others remotely. They will use on-line personas, wikis, blogs, and social networking tools to be present with others across distance. They will use these tools to “stream” their presence beyond the hours that they are physically working.

They will “cultivate” their legitimacy. They understand the new “digital” generation of employees, stakeholders and followers. Legitimacy will come from new sources. Position, experience and age are no longer the currency of legitimacy. In the 21st Century, ideas, content, and networks create legitimacy.

The new “Renaissance Leader”

The challenges of the 21st Century are enormous. The pace of change, the volume of data and information, the diversity of people and ideas, and the globalization of all manner of enterprises create a unique environment for leadership in the future. The 21st Century is like the Renaissance, an explosion of knowledge, learning and enlightenment. Like the Renaissance men of Leonardo DaVinci’s time, we need new “renaissance leaders” for the future. These leaders will embrace the lessons of the past, see the potential of the future, and use tools in new ways to excite and engage people across the globe to achieve great things. They will be adapting, learning, discerning and relating leaders. They will operate in new ways - flowing, teaming, streaming, and cultivating – to achieve extraordinary results for the organizations they represent and our collective benefit.

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What is a 21st Century Leader?

A 21st Century leader is adapting.  Given the accelerating pace of our environment, only one thing is certain and that is change.  Strategies, goals, visions and teams must change to meet the changing marketplace, customer base and human resources.  The leader must be able to change their style and manner of leading based on the people on the team, the current task and the environment where the team works.  Styles must also be adapted to address the culture of the people the leader is influencing.  With global teams and stakeholders, one must be able to influence a Japanese investor, a European technical expert and an American financial analyst.  

To do this, knowledge of culture and flexibility in approach will be key.  Finally, a 21^st Century leader must adapt his role on the team based on a number of factors.  Flexible teams are necessary to address fast moving, free flowing problems and environments.  It will be difficult, if not impossible, for a single leader to be the best leader in all times and situations during an endeavor.  This means that the leader must cede the leader role at times to another who is uniquely equipped to handle a particular phase  or set of tasks necessary to move the organization forward.  This cannot be “abdication” of the responsibilities of leadership, but more of a recognition of the new realities of leadership, made successful by approaching leadership as a “team sport,” rather than an individual event.

A 21st Century leader is always learning.  Once again, the pace of change drives the need to constantly update skills, knowledge and abilities.  If one is to be as adaptable as is needed in this environment, then the need to challenge the old methods, even those learned recently, with new methods is necessary.  The resources that are available to learn are now so vast and widely available that the leader who does not leverage them will quickly become obsolete.  Global competition and resource availability ensures that there is always a qualified candidate ready to step up to the challenge.  The leader must pay as much attention to their technical skills as their leadership skills.  Leaders’ credibility is in part based on their technical skills.  In his article “Leadership in a Combat Zone,” US Army Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis makes the case for the leader to be technically competent as a prerequisite for success.

A 21st Century leader is discerning.  The amount of data and information available to the organization regarding any possible goal or activity is exploding.  This information is being pushed, pulled and exposed to all members of the team in a constant river that must be dealt with.  The challenge that this presents is two-fold.  First, there is critical information flowing in the river of data.  Sometimes the critical piece of information will be easy to see, like a large log floating in the main channel of the river.  But, more often than not, the critical data will be a fish, swimming against the stream, 3 feet below the surface.  Depending on the location of the observer, it may be visible; or it may need to be caught in order to bring it in for consumption.  The second challenge is that the river of information is being directed towards and consumed by all parts of the organization.  Each stakeholder and team member will be reviewing the data stream and pulling out nuggets of information they believe are important.  This then becomes a new stream of information being relayed to the leader.  Sometimes the data will in fact be important, other times it will be meaningless.  Sometimes the data will be factual and accurate, other times it will be bent and distorted.  This means that a 21^st Century leader must be able to sort through too much information from too many sources, and be able to distill the essence of its meaning and the appropriate actions that must be taken based on the information. 

A 21st Century leader is relating.  They must be able to build relationships with and among the people in their organizations.  There are no longer any teams that are mere assemblies of individual workers accomplishing disparate tasks.  People within organizations are co-dependent, collaborating and cooperating parts of a greater whole.  The leader must be able to create relationships with the individuals of the team so that they can understand the background, motivations and aspirations of that person.  The leader must be able to relate information to the person in a context that it can be consumed, and this requires knowledge of the individual.  Additionally, the leader must be able to facilitate relationships among the people in the organization.  These relationships, being critical to the success of the organization, become key to the leaders’ success as well.  A dynamic leader will be fostering interaction between the members of his team, coaching individuals on how to build relationships and with whom those relationships should be built.   A new skill that 21^st Century leaders will be required to master is the ability to build relationships with people whom they have never met face-to-face.  Global organizations and lighting fast communications enable teams to be created across thousands of miles and multiple time zones.  A leader will be confronted with resources that are assigned to the organization that are remote from the leader.  This does not mean, however, that there is no need for a close relationship.  Therefore, the leader must foster that relationship across the miles and across the time divide. 

Essential Tasks

Successful leaders in the 21^st Century are those who see leadership as a “team sport” recognizing that no one person is able to flawlessly lead in today’s complex, frenetic, information-rich, globalized organization.  Leaders will still synthesize information from a wide variety of sources, translate that into a common vision or goal, and then effectively influence a multi-cultural team through personal and remote interactions to achieve great things.  However, successful leaders must know when to “cede” leadership to those with current information, cultural intelligence, or the power of the moment in order to build and sustain speed and momentum through it all.  The leaders’ ability to effortlessly flow from leader to expert, expert to follower, follower to leader will be what enables success.  This is not to say that all people will be leaders in the 21^st Century.  Leadership is not for everyone.  Not all want to be leaders and not all have the capacity for the job.

The Essential Tasks of Leadership

While there are many differences in the challenges, environment and tools of the 21^st Century, the tasks of effective leaders remain relatively constant.  A team needs a vision – a compelling view of the future that enables followers to understand what success looks like.  The vision will be described in terms that people can sense:  what it looks like, how it will feel, and the kinds of things that will be heard and experienced.  This provides the team with a sense of purpose and direction - the ability to maintain their focus when challenged by the reality of the work to be done.  21^st Century leaders will be doing more group visioning than individual visioning.  They will be planting seeds of the future state, refining and growing them with lots of sun, water and fertilizer from others.

A team requires organization and protocols for operating.   Roles and responsibilities are defined to ensure that all of the work of the team is assigned and completed.  The group establishes norms of operation and interaction, enabling it to improve in its effectiveness.  Without these elements, teams either disband or dissolve naturally; or worse yet, they become unruly mobs!  A 21^st Century leader will be able to harness the “social networking” processes of “digital natives” to propose, tag, debate, hack, and continuously evolve the organization and protocols necessary for effective team dynamics.

Another role of the leader is to motivate, inspire and influence team members.  Teams are required to accomplish tasks and goals that are difficult.  If they were easy, one person could take care of the problem and the team would not be necessary.  Teams accomplish work, which inherently means that effort must be expended and difficult work means expending more energy than would be natural for the team to take on without motivation.  The leader becomes a person who reminds the team of the goal, provides encouragement, inspiration and motivation.  Without the leader to bring out these elements, most teams will fail to accomplish the end result, or will do so with poor quality.

Next post:  What is a 21st Century Leader?

21st Century Leadership

The 21^st Century is less than a decade old, but it has proven to be as different from the 20^th Century as the Renaissance was from the Dark Ages. In almost all aspects that can be measured, things are moving faster, organizations are more diverse, information is more available, and we are more interconnected than we could have imagined just ten years ago. It is no leap of the imagination then, that we need a very different type of leader during the coming years than the leaders of the past. My first series of blog entries will be an exploration of the need for a different kind of leader in the 21st Century. To start, let me frame my view of the problem...

The Challenges of the 21^st Century

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, entrepreneur and futurist. In an interview with Chris Meyer, he observed: “We're entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress; organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace.[1]” This exponential growth in the rate of change will be a challenge to every leader during the 21^st Century.

A second challenge that requires leaders to act differently is the sheer volume of information that one has to process in this internet age. We’ve moved from a model where information was generally controlled by a few and disseminated to many to a world where everyone is both a consumer and a publisher of information. The tools of the internet allow just about anyone to contribute to wikis, blog about a topic or “broadcast yourself” with very little effort. The fact that there are now so many publishers in the world is causing an explosion of information. In the corporate world, everything is being captured and measured. The volume of data is immense, and most corporations are doing a dismal job of distilling the data into the meaningful information that leaders need to make the most effective decisions. Leaders are “drinking from the information fire hose” trying to keep up with the latest and greatest information.

Leaders in the 20^th Century generally had teams that were made up of people that were much like they were. Certainly, in the first half of the twentieth century, the corporate work force in the US was predominantly white and male. Segregation and prejudice were very effective at ensuring that there were clear boundaries between workers of different colors. Of course today, we have overcome most of the racial and sexist barriers that kept diverse people out of the workforce. One can argue that discrimination and barriers still exist, but legal protections ensure that people of diverse cultures are well represented in the workplace. Furthermore, our modern transportation and communications systems have enabled significant mixing of cultures through immigration as well. “As the 21st century begins, the ethnic and racial composition of the U.S. workforce continues to diversify at a rapid pace. Much of that change reflects an expansion in the share of foreign-born workers, from about 1 in 17 in 1960 to 1 in 8 workers today.[2]” Our modern economy has also provided the tools for the creation of global teams. These global teams are inherently made up of people from different countries and cultures. Furthermore, there is also a new kind of diversity in corporate environments today. That is the diversity of lifestyle. This includes the incorporation of people with different religious views and sexual orientations.

Finally, the 21^st Century will be challenging for leaders because of globalization. In this context, globalization is different from diversity. Globalization means that competition can occur from anywhere. In his book “The World is Flat,” Milton Friedman describes how small organizations, using the power of modern tools and the internet have successfully competed with and displaced traditional brick and mortar companies in many industries within a very short time. Globalization means that work can be disaggregated and the parts sent around the world to wherever the resources with the right skills at the right cost are located. In other words, globalization leads to global teams, global competition and global worries for just about any leader.

Coming up soon - Essential Tasks of Leadership

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[1] Meyer, Chris. “Understanding the Accelerating Rate of Change.” KurzweilAI.net. 1 May 2003. 10 Oct 2008. http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0563.html?printable=1

[2] Abraham T. Mosisa. “The Role of Foreign Born Workers in the US Economy.” Monthly Labor Review Online. May 2002, Vol. 125 No. 5. 16 Oct 2008. http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art1exc.htm