10 Challenges Before Today’s Business Leaders

Today, the business leaders face much bigger challenges than earlier. Additionally, the ground realities around are dynamically changing at faster rate than ever. The complexity is increasing exponentially. In such a scenario, to build sustainable high performance business the leaders need to prioritize, selectively . Thankfully, the management gurus have come up with some ‘must do’s to help the business leaders to focus on few priorities.

So, today's business leader needs to play the most of the following roles to lead sustainable high performance organizations.

1. Focused Strategist: Today’s business leader needs to be focused strategist. S/he has to handle all strategic issues related to the organization.

S/he needs to arrive at distinct value proposition for the company. S/he should ensure that her/his company can offer different value for clients in the sea of me too products/services. Such a value proposition needs to be proactive and effective response to the dynamic ground realities outside the organization. At the same time, s/he needs to develop this response based on the strength of the organization while leveraging the relative weakness of competition. S/he needs to communicate the strategy passionately internally so that the Strategic intent is well understood and implemented by employees. The strategy need to be formulated in such a way that the core competency of the organization gets strengthened further.

The leader needs to continuously keep track of the changes in the business environment, both immediate and distant. S/he needs to refine the strategy continuously to leverage the best for the organization.

2. Excellent Execution Practitioner: The challenge before the leader does not stop at formulation of strategy. In fact, the strategy is the beginning! Today's business leaders are tested for their execution capabilities.

The business leaders need to exceed expectations of their stakeholder while executing the brilliantly conceived strategy. The strategy needs to be executed in the harsh, ever changing battle grounds. This can be achieved only by empowering the front-line troop fighting the battle in harsh battlegrounds of the market. The dynamics of today's market are changing faster than ever. Additionally, the competitors and substituters are smartly leveraging their strengths to gain grounds. The execution needs to be proactively responsive to the changes around. This can be achieved only when the people in the organization are empowered to execute in excellent manner, rather than awaiting orders from top.

Today, the operational efficiency is the order of the day. It does not mean that the effectiveness can be given a miss. The operational efficiency and effectiveness need to go hand in hand to deliver the results. Only then, the execution of the brilliant strategy can be called as excellent execution. The stakeholders expect excellent execution from their business leaders today.

3. Builder of Enduring and Inspiring Culture: The leader needs to inspire his people to achieve the results to exceed the expectations of the stakeholders. We come across large number of managers working on the shortcut of conspiring to deliver the results. Such managers may meet short term gains, but end up affecting the culture of the organization in highly negative manner. Special care needs to be taken to weed out such managers.

The leader needs to reward the performance. Additionally, the performance measurement should be defined in such a way that the organization's high performance culture is not compromised.

The leader has the task of building an environment, which is highly challenging. The challenges should be such that the people taking such challenges should go through the 'peak experience' as noted by Maslow. The efforts should be to move towards 'plateau experience'. Thus, the leader needs to build 'exhilarating yet exhausting' environment for his people to lead them to self actualization.

The commitment to the values can not be underestimated. The values espoused by the organization need to be adhered to, at every step. The challenging times may put a great strain on the organization's values. This is the time the True Leaders are differentiated from the imitators.

4. Fat Trimmer: Today's business leader needs to look out for all kind of wastage and cut them to the least. He needs to identify and address any redundancies within the organization and the value chain. The challenge of cutting the fat does not end there. This has to be supported by bringing out synergy of various elements within the organization to boost the value delivery by the organization. Additionally, the business leader needs to put the best people in the 'Value Zone', wherein the real value is added for the organization.

5. Nurturer of Talent: Today's business leader needs to identify, tap and grow talent within the organization. He has to get the best talent to match the present and future requirements from the market too. If it comes to it, the leader needs to fight for the right talent to snatch away from the competition.

As emphasized in the paragraph about building inspiring culture, today's business leader needs to put her/his talented people to stretch themselves to reach the next level of performance.

Nurturing of talent should be supported by generous dose of Management Development Programs, OD exercises and trainings to prepare them for larger challenges as they come by. The efforts should be on to promote internal talent.

6. Developer of Leadership Pipeline: Today's business leader's responsibility does not end at nurturing the talent; s/he also needs to develop the leadership pipeline within the organization. The leadership in the organization should be people oriented. The leaders and budding leaders need to connect well with the people at all levels, as far as possible. The leaders in the pipeline should be capable of proactively identifying the opportunities and challenges ahead for the organization. There is a need for converting the challenges into opportunities for the organization. These traits need to be ingrained in the leadership and the potential leaders in the organization.

For the people in leadership position within the organization, large part of their pay should be based on the performance. Some of the organizations need to ensure that the directors have larger financial stake in the organization. Thus, their financial fortunes will be dependent on the organization's performance.

7. Innovation Incubator: Today's business leader needs to work as innovation incubator within the organization. The thrust should be always on bringing ground breaking technologies to the market. It may not be possible always to be the first to bring groundbreaking technology; in such a case, the organization should pursue aggressive follower position. At the end, the leader should strive to deliver the benefits of the innovations to the market at the earliest.

While innovating, for many organizations, there is always a question of whether they need to cannibalize the existing cash cows. In the present day environment, any delay may prove disastrous; somebody else may come out with the innovation and steal the thunder. A fine tuned execution in such situations may yield great results, yet milking the cash cows. A word of caution, innovation for the sake of innovation may actually turn out to be undoing of the organization. The challenge before the leader is to leverage both old and new technologies to achieve the strategic objectives of the organization.

8. Dealer wheeler: Today's business leader also has to be on the prowl always for the inorganic growth opportunities through mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships. Inorganic growth opportunities need to be pursued in such a way that the service to the existing clientele of both the players get better offerings from such arrangement. Joining hands with complementers enhances the value addition, largely. In all these efforts, there should be always efforts to leverage synergies for the benefit of the market.

9. Astute Decision Maker: Today’s business leader needs to be an astute decision maker. He needs to be a great judge of people and strategy. Her/his judgment capabilities are tested in the crisis time for the organization. The decision making is science and art. The leader needs to practice his decision making skills continuously to enhance his judgment capability. Great business leaders ensure that the decisions get continuously refined right from the conceptual stage till the end of the execution. They are never afraid of admitting mistakes at any point. Additionally, they go great length to proactively correct the course of action. So, today’s business leader needs to be astute decision maker. At the same time, s/he needs to have the humility to accept the responsibility for the mistakes and correct them.

10. Driver of Continuous Improvement: Leadership, whether in business or elsewhere, is not an entitlement. Leadership is a big responsibility. Many imitators may think otherwise. Every leader has to keep on investing on improving himself. S/he needs to question her/his contribution always and needs to improve.

The above list may seem to be a tough act to follow. Looking at the challenges, one is tempted to say that today’s business leader needs to juggle many balls in the air. The leader’s role is tougher than that; he also needs to walk on tight rope of public glare while juggling these balls. According to ‘What Really Works’, the leaders need to handle all the first four challenges and any 2 of the next 4 challenges. The last two challenges need to be handled as part of the leader’s responsibility.

After looking at the challenges, today’s successful business leaders of consistently high performing organizations seem to be super heroes. Probably, the trick lies in being really good at what they do the best and delegate well so as to focus on priorities.

Acknowledgments: 

Mr. Nitin Nohria (current Dean of Harvard Business School), and coauthors of the book ‘What Really Matters’ conducted Evergreen research to identify the practices contributing to sustainable high performance in organizations. They identified 4 primary ‘must’ practices and any 2 of 4 secondary practices contributing to the sustainable high performance in organizations. 

Mr. Noel M Tichy and Mr. Warren Bennis have identified the process of taking judgment calls in their book ‘Judgment’. 

Many other books, especially, 'Employees First; Customers Second’ by Mr. Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies and the management literature by Global Management Guru, Mr. Ram Charan, have helped identifying the high priority challenges before today’s business leaders.

PS: Yes, There are 9 balls in the figure above to show the challenges. The 10th challenge, Continuous Improvement, is represented by continuous juggling of the balls! BTW, the direction of the juggling of balls can be in any direction; as far as the balls are juggling in air ;)