(upbeat bright music)
- You don't need me to tell you this.
But these days, we're asking a lot of leaders,
and it seems as though we're asking a lot,
and we're also really relying on leaders to deliver,
often in the face
of what seems like a pretty daunting set of challenges.
You think about shareholders who of course are expecting
a return on their investment.
You look at the pace of business that is accelerating.
You think about the rise of social and geopolitical tension.
We've just barely started to get our arms
around digital and what that means,
and now we're being challenged to embrace
artificial intelligence and prepare for the metaverse.
And of course, there's always the existential threat
of climate change
and we're all doing what we can to address that.
And as if that isn't enough,
we're in the middle of the great resignation,
which has become such a big deal
that even Beyonce has gotten in on the act
with her latest hit song,
the beyond great song which is,
♪ You won't break my soul ♪
You know that one?
(everyone laughing)
Okay, it's the latest song and it just shows
that we are in the midst of the great resignation.
Anyway, a lot of challenges for leaders
but there's also some good news.
Over the past year, really in the midst of all this change,
we thought it was time to just step back
and to really dig deep into what is expected
of leaders going forward.
And so what we did is we talked to a lot of clients.
We looked at a lot of the academic research.
We also conducted a survey of 9,000 people around the world.
One of the interesting findings
was that the respondents to the survey,
75% of them felt that during the pandemic,
leaders actually positively rose to the occasion.
Somehow in the midst of that crisis,
leaders found what was required for them to truly lead.
And so for us, that gives us a sense
of some of the inspiration for what we need from leaders
but also the hope that leaders,
into the right circumstances,
can actually step up and meet that challenge.
We put the findings together from all of this
into a report that we published
called Why the World Needs Generative Leaders.
At their core, generative leaders
leave the world a better place than they found it
and they do that by relying primarily on three approaches.
The first one is to reimagine and reinvent business
for the benefit of all stakeholders,
yes for shareholders but also employees,
for customers, for society,
and for the planet more broadly.
Secondly, they are inspiring
and enriching the lives of people.
They've put aside some of the practices
of treating people as a means to an end,
or worse, treating people as collateral damage
and they really are investing in the well-being of people.
And then thirdly, they are executing.
Leaders have to execute
but they're executing and innovating
through super-charged teams.
Gone are the days of thinking of leadership
as the individual hero.
It's very much a team sport.
In other words, leaders are leading
with their head, heart and hands
and that's really the punch line for my message today.
Now let's unpack that just a little bit.
Let's focus, first of all,
on the head of generative leaders.
And here I'm going to take you to Italy,
to the Italian utility company, Enel,
and their wonderful leader, Francesco Starace.
He became the CEO in 2014 and immediately embarked
on this incredible transformation.
He assembled a team of generative leaders
and aligned them all around a very big ambition,
to become the world's first renewable super major.
You've got super majors in fossil fuels.
They were going to be the first renewables super major.
He said some very specific goals
to eliminate the use of coal by 2030,
and then to be carbon zero by 2050.
How did he do that?
He knew he wasn't going to get there alone.
So he assembled a supplier club.
Think of it as an ecosystem of partners
that would work together with Enel in order to move forward.
He also created an open innovation platform
to be able to crowdsource ideas from around the world.
And so far, they've received over half a million inputs
from individuals from a hundred countries around the world.
They've also leveraged their customer data.
They have 69 million customers
and they're constantly looking
at what are they seeing in the data
to enable them to align the transformation
with the needs of their customers.
So the head of a generative leader,
you can see that in what Francesco Starace is doing,
leading the transformation of Enel.
Then, we turn to the hands.
Where do we look in the world to find innovative hands,
companies that are executing and innovating
through super-charged teams?
Well, as it turns out from 2000 to 2007,
I was based in Shanghai leading our greater China practice.
And at the time, I can tell you that Chinese companies
were voraciously seeking and applying
concepts from the West.
Fast forward to today and what you see
is that we, more often than not, are now going to China
to look for leading edge examples,
particularly when it comes to innovation
around the operating models,
the hands of companies.
So recently, we did this for a major US technology company
wanting inspiration for their operating model for 2030.
And so we went to companies like ByteDance and Alibaba,
what did we find?
Some really interesting things.
First of all, they really have embraced the idea
of customer-focused,
multifunctional agile teams
as the core of how they're operating.
Then, cutting across all those teams
are a set of horizontal functional platforms,
think data, technology, analytics
that can be used by all those customer facing agile teams.
And then very interesting,
seeing an application here borrowing from the West of OKRs.
And so you see companies like ByteDance and Alibaba
have taken OKRs but have really put them on steroids.
They've brought technology to enable them
so they can use them dynamically in order to set goals,
to allocate financial and human capital,
and then to be able to monitor the progress
of these teams dynamically.
But then you might say, okay, but ByteDance, Alibaba,
they're digital natives.
They're only a few years old.
They have no legacy systems to contend with.
What about more traditional companies?
Well, here, what's really interesting,
we look at companies like Haier.
Haier is the world's largest appliance manufacturer.
And their CEO, Zhang Ruimin, he had this idea
of how do we actually take some of those ideas
of what we're seeing
in some of these digital native companies.
And so under the banner of, in my toneless Mandarin,
(speaking in foreign language)
which roughly translates
to people, user, connection,
he launched a fundamental revolution
of their operating model and broke the company
into 4,000 small micro-enterprises,
super-charged teams.
And each of those teams is charged
with really understanding the needs of customers,
and then bringing along technology
and partners with other parts of the organization
and partners outside of the company
to deliver solutions for those customers.
But it's a fantastic example
of really embracing this idea
of executing and innovating through super-charged teams
and we find that at the rock phase in China,
which then leaves us with the heart.
So I mentioned that we had done this survey
of 9,000 people around the world.
One of the other interesting findings from that research
was we asked them
to rank across 18 attributes
of generative leadership,
what attributes are most important?
And you guessed it.
The top four of the 18 attributes
were all attributes of the heart.
The first, recognition.
See me, appreciate me,
reward me for what I'm doing.
Demonstrate empathy, you know, put yourselves in my shoes,
deep caring, care for the physical,
emotional and social well-being.
And then the last one
is come alongside me with coaching and developing,
help me to develop the skills that I need for the future.
And so what you can see in that is people around the world,
and this was a multi-country survey,
people around the world are crying out
for leaders to lead with their hearts,
but there was another interesting finding, a little darker,
which was of all those attributes of head, heart and hands,
the attributes that are actually most neglected
are attributes of the heart,
and so we've got some work to do.
So where do we turn for how to lead with heart?
And here, I'm going to turn to a leader who I greatly admire,
as do many people,
and that is Satya Nadella from Microsoft.
Back in 2014, when he was appointed as the new CEO,
of course, you'd think a big celebration,
and at the same time, Bloomberg ran a piece,
the title of which
was You Don't Want to be Microsoft's CEO.
So why would that be?
Well, of course, he was facing
an enormous set of challenges,
which is hard even to remember at this point,
given how far they've come.
But they had just acquired the handset business from Nokia
which would subsequently have to be written off.
They had launched Windows 8 a few months before
and it was summarily panned by the market.
And then, of course, there was that massive problem,
which was out of nowhere,
Amazon had risen up to become, at the time,
the undisputed leader in cloud services with AWS.
Microsoft had taken a run at social,
at search, at mobile, and now is at risk of missing out
on the biggest wave of all which was the shift to cloud.
So what did he do?
Well, as you'd expect, like most leaders these days,
he came in and he launched a broad transformation program
but what really stands out
is the way he led that program
together with the leadership team.
Even though he was facing
an enormous set of immediate challenges,
he actually stepped back and asked the existential question,
why does Microsoft exist?
And he landed on this beautiful purpose statement
to empower every person and organization on the planet
to achieve more.
But what he did, which was awesome, is he said,
the words on the page are just the starting point.
What we need to do is to ensure that every product we build,
every technology we incubate
is driven by that sense of purpose.
And so what they've done is they've invested massively
behind climate, behind accessibility to broadband internet.
And for him, something very important
is to make sure their technologies
are truly available, accessible to every person.
So they've really gone beyond surface purpose
and driven that purpose deep in the organization.
And then, there was the culture.
Some of you may remember a famous meme
of the culture of Microsoft's or the meme
of the culture at the time,
everyone pointing inward shooting at each other with guns,
and that was the perfect meme
to describe their culture at that time.
So Satya took this on
and he went through a massive process
to articulate, activate and embed
a new culture around growth mindset,
One Microsoft, customer-obsessed,
diverse and inclusive,
and making a difference for society,
and they have fundamentally transformed the culture.
Also, at the heart of their program,
he knew that he knew needed leaders
to be leading in a different way
and so they invested in launching and implementing
a new leadership model built around three elements,
create clarity, generate energy, deliver success,
head, heart, hands.
And what do you expect from leaders,
particularly as it relates to the heart,
is that you're inspiring optimism.
You're creating and generating energy
through good times and bad.
You're investing in the capabilities
of your teams and your people.
So he's really expecting those leaders
to lead with their head, their hands,
but very much their hearts.
So if you're with me so far,
it leaves us with one remaining question.
If you, like us, believe
that the world needs generative leaders,
the question then is, well, how do we develop them?
When you look across your organization,
what I would say,
and maybe we do a little thought experiment here,
just take a moment and think,
what is it that I naturally lead with myself?
Do I naturally do with my head?
Am I more of a visionary, a strategist?
Do I lead with my hands?
Am I the type of person that loves to get in there
and get things done?
Or am I someone who leads with my heart,
inspiring and empowering people?
So you've probably got that image in your head
of the type of leader you are,
and what I would say if we had more time,
we could think about the teams that you're leading,
the leadership teams across your organizations,
and what we would find is a mix
of leaders with different strengths.
The data would suggest it'll be a bit more biased
towards the head and hands
with a weaker set of heart attributes
but we would still find a mix.
And so then you think, okay, well, what would we do?
How would we develop leaders
that truly have head, heart and hands capabilities?
And here, I'll just leave you with three quick thoughts.
The first one is to reflect deeply.
Think about the vision you have for your company.
Think about the capabilities
that you need from your leaders,
those heart and head and hands capabilities
we've been talking about.
And then also, go through some sort of a process
through surveys, through diagnostics,
to assess what are the gaps that we have,
where do we need to lean in most
in order to really get all of our leaders
able to lead with head, heart and hands?
So that's the starting point, that reflection.
Then, the second one is make sure you integrate learning
deeply into the real work of those teams.
It's not about just sending them off
to some academy somewhere.
Bring the learning real time to the teams,
immersive experiential things around gaming,
around using different simulations
and different experiential learning techniques.
And then, the third one is to make sure
you're continuously measuring and monitoring the progress,
that you're delivering outcomes
while you're upskilling your team.
So just stepping back from what I've said,
it's pretty clear, if we're honest with ourselves,
that over the last X number of years,
we've often relied and rewarded
leaders who have delivered results
but they've done so by being a bit extractive,
extracting from the planet and extracting from people.
What we really need going forward
are leaders who are generative,
leaders who leave the world a better place
than they found it
and leaders who will lead
with their head, heart and hands, thank you.
(audience clapping)