Without doubt, India is at an exciting juncture, thanks to the palimpsest of policy and reform over several decades. These are times to avoid distractions like the recent news item on the market capitalisation of Tata Group exceeding the GDP of Pakistan. True, but so what? After all, the combined market capitalisation of just two US companies, Microsoft and Nvidia, exceeds India’s GDP! Among the key challenges right now for Indian companies is preparing the ‘Tomorrow Leader’ for the nation.
I speak each year to about 7,500 younger people face-to-face and connect with another 10,000 through Zoom and social media. The feedback, critique, and comments that I receive are very helpful in determining the topics for further writing and discussion. I am frequently asked, “What is the impact of artificial intelligence and technologies on the future leader?”
I am no expert on technology, but 50 years of observing how leadership approaches became ‘past’ when I was young, and how new ideas shaped leadership of the ‘future’ help me offer an anecdotal view of the ‘tomorrow leader’. Leadership exists in all domains—academic, political, public service, defence, enterprise (which happens to be my field of experience), and many others. Although one can slice and dice skills by domain, it is instructive to explore what has remained common, from the time of Alexander the Great till modern times, irrespective of timing or domain—the so-called eternal principles.
Successful leaders over the centuries have displayed three important capabilities. First, a capability to learn what can be taught-- all the teachable things. Alexander learnt from Ptolemy and Aristotle. I call this cognitive capability. Second, a curiosity and penchant to track changes in society and technology, and to distill what is relevant for the immediate times. I call this adaptive capability. Third, sensitivity and empathy for people’s relationships and the vagaries of human behaviour. I call this behavioural capability. The bouquet of these three capabilities influences an individual’s leadership style, and more importantly, leadership effectiveness. This model is born out of my experience, and is relevant in all domains.
The first capability, relating to teaching ability and domain-specific cognition should not be generalised in a column like this. Defence people are trained in a defence or military academy, enterprise people are trained at institutes of management, and academic people in teaching and research institutions. During the first one-third of a career, irrespective of the domain, what accelerates advancement is the demonstration of cognitive capability. Bosses think well of young officers, who learn quickly and apply their learnings for the benefit of the institution. I recall that in the first third of my own career, I was a quick learner and an advocate of computer-driven approaches, and the use of quantitative analysis in addressing management problems. I think those served me well at that phase of my career.
In the second one-third of my career, I found that it was important to learn new skills (in my case, branding and market management) without losing too much touch with the skills of the previous phase. Recall that mainframes were giving way to desktops and, later still, to laptops and hand-held. Equally important was the need to reprogramme behavioural capability because I now had a team, albeit small, reporting to me. The motivation to keep learning tends to level off at some stage. As middle-level leaders position themselves for senior-level responsibilities, they must be quick to adapt and incorporate into their leadership, adaptive and behavioural capabilities. In future columns, these will be explored in more detail, but, for the present, I can offer only a bird’s eye view.
In the final one-third of the career, the mastery and deployment of behavioural capability is paramount. It is then that we learn what every professional learns at that stage, that is, to paraphrase what Sir Isaac Newton said, it is easier to predict the movement of the stars than to predict human behaviour. When we refer to people who are ‘not with the times’, we tend to use age as a rough indicator, but what we really mean is that their adaptive and/or behavioural capabilities have atrophied. Consider adaptive adaptation. A person who has been a print journalist par excellence may have missed the television or digital trends in the media environment. A defence person who has been trained to think of manpower and armaments as the principal tools of warfare might miss the new developments of remote armaments or cryptology. I know management leaders, who would be inhibited without a secretary taking dictations or who would print out emails on which the leader would write responses to be keyed in by the secretary!
Consider behavioural adaptation. One example is that of a manager or academic, who might have risen impressively for demonstrating superior knowledge that is usable by subordinates. Such a rising star may be ill-prepared to learn from more knowledgeable youngsters later on. Another example is the ability to ‘let go.’ Juniors must be given responsibility, after suitable training and must be allowed to discharge that responsibility without close oversight. A boss must learn to let subordinates make mistakes—not ones that will sink the institution, but ones that are the self-learning blocks for the upcoming person. This is tough because the boss is still accountable to the wider stakeholders. The Tomorrow Leader is a very vital subject for the advancement of the future manager, so it will be instructive to develop the theme in the future.
R Gopalakrishnan
Author and business commentator. His fifty-year professional career was spent in Hindustan Unilever and Tata Group
(Views are personal)
(rgopal@themindworks.me)