A new leadership model is needed for changing world order

By Punit Renjen
With Industry 4.0 reshaping the way nearly everyone lives and works, global organisations are wading through a new era of tremendous and rapid upheaval. Some will rise to the challenge and change the world, while others will struggle and ultimately sink.

Among the myriad factors that will determine the winners and losers, none are more influential than the people who lead those organisations. It’s not enough that they understand the confluence of the physical and digital assets that define the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They also must achieve balance: between acting globally and antiglobal populism; between innovation and regulation; between shareholder and societal expectations.

Our firm has analysed and understood which executives are preparing their businesses and employees for the future and how they’re doing it. And the message we’re getting couldn’t be clearer: Winning in Industry 4.0 requires a new model for leadership.

Of course, profitability and growth are still important. But achieving them necessitates a new mindset for action. Sales and marketing are still vital, but customer expectations are a constantly moving target. Attracting and retaining the best employees is critical, but how we keep people challenged and happy has evolved. Technology remains an enabler, but its capabilities have grown exponentially.

I’m confident every competent business leader knows this. But, through our work and research-—most recently, a survey of 2,000-plus global CXOs—we see a conspicuous divide between those diving into the deep end and others who timidly toe the water.

Some of our observations may be surprising. For instance, there’s evidence that companies led by socially conscious leaders are growing revenue more than those who haven’t successfully found the balance between doing good and making a profit. They’re changing and developing products or services to benefit society and are integrating societal impact into their core strategies. This is a strategy that bodes well for these companies’ abilities to attract the best and brightest.

Our research shows that CXOs who embrace collaboration and use methodical, data-focused approaches in strategic decisionmaking are also better prepared to win. As digital technologies inundate leaders with more and more valuable information, those who know how to efficiently interpret and act on that data clearly have an edge. But it’s more than number crunching and discipline. Leaders also need input from an inclusive set of stakeholders, and they need to consider the impact of their decisions on society.

We see leaders who upset markets and industries through investments in disruptive technologies. In doing so, they set their organisations apart from competitors. Unfortunately, most executives are investing in technologies not to disrupt, but to protect themselves from the disruptors. Through their myopia, they are doing themselves and their organisations a grave disservice.

While technology is central to most Industry 4.0 conversations, leaders who are poised to succeed recognise the equally vital need to prepare their people for digital transformation. There’s growing consensus among CXOs that most jobs will not be replaced by technology, but rather, they’ll be augmented. That means employees not only will have to learn and interact with machines in new ways, but they’ll also need to elevate their valuable, uniquely human skills that robots cannot replicate. Leaders who are aggressively training their people for this new reality are steps ahead of their competitors who aren’t.

Winning in Industry 4.0 will require leaders to have a wide-ranging set of differentiating abilities and the confidence, informed by diverse opinions, to navigate through confusing and uncharted seas. At their cores, though, they’ll need to understand and embrace that “doing good” is good for business. That using defined strategic processes and data to make decisions can create competitive advantages. That companies benefit from a longterm view toward investing in disruptive technologies. And that leaders who place a premium on training will be more successful.

Leaders who embody these characteristics are not only improving their own bottom lines, growing faster than their counterparts and retaining top talent, but they also are visionary in the ways they’re leading their companies into the future.

They are the ones who will change the world.

(The author is CEO, Deloitte Global. Renjen will be speaking at the Global Business Summit 2019.)