Hack:
Are you ready for the 3G (Third Generation) Leadership challenge?

By Olivier Lavergne - Technology Services Engagement Manager Europe at Hewlett Packard

December 2, 2010 at 3:18am

Moonshots

Focus the work of management on a higher purpose

Embed the ethos of community and citizenship

Humanize the language of business

Summary

Some time ago, I watched a free webinar by Dr. Daniel H. Kim, co-founder of Pegasus communications, about the need to invent the 3rd Generation of Leadership for the XXI century. Some of the ideas covered in the webinar were well spotted out. I thought it may be a good idea to connect the dots. The ideas covered in this hack were his, I take no credit for any of them, other than sharing with my fellows in management innovation.

Problem

My key take-aways from Dr. Kim webinar were the following:

We often hear about our company vision and strategy and objectives and initiatives... but how much time do we spend in checking that our personal values are congruent with the company ones? How much time do we spend in defining a purpose for what we do? If values and purpose are not clear and shared yet, then it is too early to talk about vision and strategy, vision and strategy are missing the critical foundation to ensure their successful execution by all employees
The first generation of leaders were entrepreneurs. After 2 world wars, they had a world to rebuild, they rolled up their sleeves to get it done as quickly as possible. Some of them were true pioneers, who built some of the biggest empires of today
The second generation of leaders is the bulk of the managers as we know them today. The world has been rebuilt already, It is much less about being a pioneer or an entrepreneur than it is to fine tune the model in order to make it as lean and as efficient as it can possibly be. This worked quite well for a couple of decades but we have now reached the limit of the diminishing returns.
Which is why the time has now come for the 3rd generation of leadership. Pioneering and innovating should come back to the forefront. It is now time again to invent new products, new services, new business models but we shall not come back to the 1st generation of leadership. The world has become more global, more virtual, more open, more connected than ever... it has also become more conscious of preserving the planet we live on and reducing the inequalities between the North and the South. The supernations of yesterday will no longer rule the world of tomorrow. Hence, the management recipes of the post world war II pioneers and entrepreneurs will not work any longer. We desperately need a third generation of new leaders that will embrace the world we live in today.

I found this presentation quite insightful and definitely well suited for the members of this Management Innovation eXchange forum.

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