Today, we are witnessing a mixed plethora of economic developments – some of you might be feeling to have missed the train whereas some of you might be having a sense of exciting developments. For some one, recession has been very tough and efforts had to be made to cut down the costs of living due to squeeze in income. Some of employers have creatively reduced the hours of their man-force or shifting them to their homes by giving home based office work, to reduce their fixed overheads after having open cordial and honest talks. Jobs are still important more than there are cuts in the man-power.There is new economic order being borne as well. We are entering into the era of sustainability, when on the one hand, natural resources are depleting fast due to growing demand of the increasing population and on the other hand, it has been seen for last ten years that availability of the appropriate talent is also becoming scarce. Talent is still there, it is abundant. The key issues are how you think about skills and capability and how you inspire and engage existing talent. If we understand the better, we can harness it better.
It is the understanding that creates value for the society and nation. Talent has to be harnessed and understood to ensure the better utility. Rather than hierarchical, top down, old business models, future may belong to stakeholder driven and collaborative dynamic organizational models. You may have to change your approach to issues like governance and environmental responsibility because talents wish to work for ethical and responsible employers.
Tomorrow, your job may be tougher. The qualities and conventions are undergoing major change. Firstly, you may have to widen your thinking horizon to have access to global community. Thriving in global market comes about when you are actually in global market. Secondly, You need to be able to manage the complexity of techniques as well as managerial and accounting abilities together, leaving behind the narrow vision of being expert in a single subject. Thirdly, culture which is driven throughout your team to understand the behaviour and maintaining relationship, is the most valuable which showcase your team to the third person. Your team must create an impression that you are humane to the society. It is true that due to recession, when it was getting difficult to meet the fixed expenses, some values have been compromised upon to reduce the costs but that were not worth welcome and must have been avoided. If you are able to maintain your patience even during your down fall, you can rise with the first opportunity available.
As a leader when you wish to Accomplish Your Dreams, you owe the duty of generating appropriate financial return but that is not possible without creating a strong communication with your team members and all those who are concerned with your activities. You must have a vision of their aspirations with you and you should make them aware of your wishes too in time. Any gap in communication may play hell with your efforts. They need to be confident of your values, they must know how you do the work and how they must respond back with a sense of transparency on the both sides. You need to create a framework clearly stipulating profit earning and non-profit earning activities so that the expectations are styled accordingly.
While you expect good financial returns over your efforts, you can not neglect your attention and responsibilities towards the communities and environment. For this, you need to have greater sense of what your mission and purpose is. You need to be confident of your efforts for social welfare. To be successful, you need to be able to work with multiple agencies to pay attention to issues of environment, water, waste, human rights and other factors of human interest. Far often, it is the skills of the business that will provide solutions for all these problems.
Teams of future will have a governance structure which is diverse and transparent, and where complexities are fully understood to enable tough decision with a long term vision and the courage and capability to see that through. In near future, leadership qualities will need to be inculcated in your team at every level to handle smaller projects to assimilate into a bigger object at the top of the pyramid. Hierarchical structures will give away a lot of smaller parts together to co-create value. This way, your team may not be necessarily a large conglomerate to create an image of being capitalist in disguise. Your team working for a common cause should be comprised of various entrepreneurs to be selected on global basis so that the vested interests of some region(s) are not permitted to crush the local potentials as was done during infamous colonial rule.
The leader of future has got more difficult targets, more difficult complexities in socio-economic environment. To Accomplish Your Dreams in such environ, you need to be ready by now by expanding your thinking and equipping yourself with latest techniques and managerial skills. Progress is not now a matter of inheritance.