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Leadership in Changing Times
13 January 2012:
The changing context in which leaders operate was one of the recurring themes to emerge from the presentations, round table discussion and networking dinner that made up this event. The following article considers this issue, drawing on the insights and views of the event’s hosts, the business leaders who attended and keynote speakers Anne-Laure Doutriaux, Country Manager, France, at Raytheon Professional Services and Véronique-Sophie Bounaud-Lemoine, Global Director Executive & Talent Management - Group HR at AXA Group
New products, new challenges
Many companies are currently experiencing profound change in their business models, in their competitive environment, as well as in the demographics of their markets and workforce. Anne-Laure Doutriaux of Raytheon Professional Services, gave the example of her own company, which in France – one of its 100 plus markets – is an established provider of training solutions to the automotive industry. That industry is now in what she described as the first stage of a revolution in transportation as it responds to growing concerns about climate change by developing electric vehicles. “Of course, that’s a change for the companies themselves but also for the sales staff in their dealership networks - and for us,” said Doutriaux.
Raytheon Professional Services is currently training around 6,000 employees around Europe for a major French car manufacturer that recently launched a new electric vehicle. Since there was initially some resistance to this form of transportation from people who had spent decades designing, building and selling conventional vehicles, much of the training has focused on employees’ motivation – on opening their minds to new possibilities. The company’s leadership, too, has had to be helped to understand that they must change the way they view transportation and therefore conduct business. As Doutriaux said: “Today people have their own cars: tomorrow that may not be the case, so we see huge change ahead in the automotive industry.”
However, changes of the magnitude that Doutriaux described are not confined to the automotive industry. One of the business leaders attending the Executive Briefing told how his own company, which operates in the mining industry and had traditionally been driven purely by technical considerations, had recently adopted a more customer-focused approach.
Leading change
With the rapidly shifting business landscape placing new demands on corporate leaders, participants in the round table agreed that leadership assessment and development processes needed to be sufficiently robust to enable leaders to deal with dramatic change. Today’s leaders need to be able to set strategic goals that take advantage of changes in customer demand, to align employees with these goals and maintain high levels of energy and commitment throughout the organisation – even when market conditions are as turbulent as they have been in recent years.
In this context, leadership competencies such as versatility, resilience and the ability to drive change are becoming increasingly important. But that does not necessarily mean that organisations must now abandon the leadership competency frameworks that they have in some cases spent years developing. The change they need to make is perhaps more one of emphasis. This was a point made by Véronique-Sophie Bounaud-Lemoine, Global Director Executive & Talent Management -Group HR at AXA Group, one of the keynote speakers at the Executive Briefing. “We have been reviewing our leadership competency model but decided to keep it as it is,” she said.
“Even though our industry is changing, we still need at the basic level people who can challenge the status quo and at a higher level people who can innovate.”
