For the past decade, IBM has conducted face-to-face surveys of more than 1,500 CEOs across 3 dozen industries to get a measure of their business sense, current concerns and trends in leadership. The most recent, called “Capitalizing on Complexity,” is a fascinating read.
In the intro, Samuel Palmisano, IBM’s CEO, writes: “… events, threats and opportunities aren’t just coming at us faster or with less predictability; they are converging and influencing each other to create entirely unique situations. These firsts-of-their-kind developments require unprecedented degrees of creativity—which has become a more important leadership quality than attributes like management discipline, rigor or operational acumen.”
In an interview with Fast Company, Steven Tomasco, a manager at IBM Global Business Services, expressed surprise at this key finding, saying that it is “very interesting that coming off the worst economic conditions they’d ever seen, [CEOs] didn’t fall back on management discipline, existing best practices, rigor, or operations. In fact, they [did] just the opposite.”
The report says that creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.
To download a copy of Capitalizing on Complexity, go to public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03297
usen/GBE03297USEN.PDF.
