Setting the scene
Predicting corporate change and its implications for management over a long time horizon is a notoriously difficult and dangerous activity. If anything can be learned from the recent world financial crisis and economic downturn, it is that the future business environment will present those responsible for leading companies with continuous turbulence, requiring them to implement major change in the ways in which they organise work and manage people. Managers of the future will face a radically transforming business world, increasing competitive pressures, resulting particularly from globalisation, and ever higher levels of personal challenge and stress.

Around the world, organisations in business and management education are grappling with the problem of how to identify and develop the 'competent leader', who will have the skills and abilities to handle such demanding roles in this new business era. Although these organisations vary in size and activity, they share one thing in common ⌐ a strong belief in the strategic importance of human capital. They recognise that their long term competitiveness depends on their ability to develop and utilise the expertise and talent of all their staff. Many are evolving into knowledge-based organisations whose major asset is know-how; others define their goal as becoming learning organisations where continuous development becomes a way of life.

As organisational structures become more diverse and complex, many businesses have moved towards flatter, decentralised structures in order to become more flexible and market driven. This has led to a growing emphasis on 'horizontal' management, operating primarily through lateral rather than hierarchical relationships, and requires such competencies as clarity of vision, strategic leadership and cross-cultural team working to ensure success. Taken together, these changes are forcing businesses to depend increasingly on people, rather than systems and procedures.

Businesses are increasingly recognising that they are among the most influential institutions worldwide, and increasing globalisation affords them an opportunity to shape a better world for existing and future generations. This requires globally responsible leaders to think and act in a global context, broaden their corporate purpose to reflect accountability to society around the world, and put ethics at the centre of their thoughts, words and deeds ie. to adopt a 'triple bottom line' perspective on business performance. Leadership development is starting to give corporate global responsibility the centrality it deserves, and business schools must play a pivotal role, in partnership with businesses, to develop future leaders who are capable of ensuring that business is a force for good.

Management for the future
Trends in the business environment and changes in organisational design are placing new and substantial demands on managers. More and more, effective managerial performance involves learning to handle complexity, diversity and ambiguity. As a result, the manager's future role will be to act as:

• A Sensor: managers must have a better understanding of the external influences on the organisations.


• An Integrator: managers will have to manage a more diverse range of lateral relationships, often using sources of influence that do not depend on formal authority.


• A Leader: creative and inspiring leadership will be needed at all levels of an organisation.


• An Animateur: managers will have to mobilise and channel human energy.


• A Focuser: managers must be able to focus on the present and look far into the future.


• An Information User: being able to process and make sense of a profusion of complex data.

These changes imply a more holistic view of the manager's job and reflect a shift in emphasis from what the manager knows to what he/she stands for. They also highlight the growing importance of leadership development. Research shows that organisations are moving from a "fragmented" approach to management training and development, where such activities are peripheral to the organisation, via a more systematic "formalised", to a "focused" approach where training and development are intrinsic to the organisation, and seen as providing competitive advantage.

The focused approach to development raises important issues for organisations, for managers and for human resource professionals. Organisations must recognise leadership development as one component in a continuous process of organisation development. They should promote learning as a cherished organisational value and must seek to link training and development to corporate strategy. They must give careful thought to the nurturing of leadership skills at all levels of the organisation. Managers themselves need coaching and mentoring skills to fulfil their growing role as developers of others. The trainer's wider role will be more demanding, and much needs to be done to develop the trainers to become facilitators of continuous learning, rather than teachers of courses.

International Management
What is beyond dispute is that managers of the future will have to apply their skills within an increasingly international business environment.

Many larger companies have already recognised that they cannot thrive on domestic markets alone. Indeed, an era is fast approaching where the concept of being a national or a domestic company is losing meaning. Through takeovers, mergers, joint ventures and strategic alliances, companies are fast becoming consortia of smaller organisations, and no longer merely expanding internationally on the basis of the strength of their domestic market share. Their national loyalties are diminishing as they co-ordinate business assets in multiple countries. For example, the Swiss firm Nestle has 4% of its employees based in Switzerland and generates only 2% of its sales there. The Swiss/Swedish engineering company ABB has 111,000 people employed in 100 countries, while Unilever employs more than 200,000 staff spread across 78 countries.

Beyond these statistics, the changing organisational structure of large companies is accelerating the development of a new breed of manager. A previous CEO of ABB said of the company: "There is no parent around the traditional form; all operating companies are sisters. I sit in Zurich presiding over a 100 people in HQ. It will not get larger than that. It is a new concept of a truly global company that we are creating. Some people say we have no home country. The truth is that we have many home countries."

It is important to understand this changing picture of the world in which business operates as it provides the context in which to consider international management. As more and more business is conducted internationally, companies face the increasing challenge of enabling people of different cultures to work effectively together. 'Internationalism' is, therefore, the ability to work with local differences in a global context. The 'international manager' must be able to act locally but think and plan strategically and globally.

Recent research reveals that there are two sides to the abilities needed by international managers. The first involves active or 'doing' competencies, consisting of four main roles:

• Championing international strategy: this means working with other managers around the world to create a vision of the future and formulate strategies to take the organisation forward.


• Cross-border coach and co-ordinator: by collaborating with local management teams to encourage them to contribute their own ideas.


• Intercultural mediator and change agent: making sure you are aware of both your own cultural underpinnings and the need to be sensitive to cultural differences.


• Managing personal effectiveness: handling the stress and travel of an international lifestyle.

Despite the tensions and heavy demands, successful international managers have a philosophy of life or set of 'being' competencies that underpins the active side of the job. This consists of three mutually sustaining parts:

• Cognitive complexity: the cultural empathy derived from being able to identify relationships and patterns between different dimensions of a complex situation.


• Emotional energy: resilience to enable risk-taking and handling stressful situations.


• Psychological maturity: a curiosity to learn combined with a strong personal morality and value system.

Of course, these competencies may not be confined to international managers; they may become the requirements for all senior leadership roles in the future, as business becomes inherently global.Organisations of the future
At every level of analysis, the picture emerging from recent research is one of organisations and individuals having to manage tension and contradictions, where personal and business ethics are crucial in determining how best to respond.

Looking at the broad business context, it is clear that the debate about the role of business in society, and the future impact of economic and social issues on organisations, will increase. While recognising that business will have to re-examine its relationship with the rest of society if both are to prosper, many managers find it difficult to focus on such issues while they continue to face short-term pressures for survival. This conflict between short-term survival goals and long-term prosperity underlies many of the paradoxes facing organisations as they look to the future. It is not a question of choosing between the short and long term; on the contrary, organisations must find ways of simultaneously satisfying the demands of both. The successful organisation of the future will be one that has reconciled the conflicting pressures:

• Between the short and long term


• Between internationalisation and serving key local markets.


• Between sticking to core activities and diversifying into new strategic alliances.

There is increasing clarity on the emerging issues in the world of organisational change. Delayering, restructuring and less authoritarian management styles have been around for a considerable time, but other trends look set to be of growing importance. These include:

• An increasing regard for corporate responsibility with organisations taking account of their impact on a wide range of stakeholders.


• The development of a widely dispersed workforce supported by the growing use of information technology and telecommunications.


• An increasing link between rewards and performance, combined with ways of encouraging a sense of employee ownership in companies.


• Leadership development becoming a process of continuous learning, rather than periodic training courses.

Overall, there is a move towards a concept of the organisation as a living system that is constantly evolving. Within such an organisation, the way people group together will be more fluid, less hierarchical and more ambiguous. New and complex sets of relationships will exist both inside the organisation and with external groups connected outside its formal boundary (such as strategic alliances with suppliers, customers, or even competitors). The formal command and control structures will no longer exist. Maintaining the loyalty and commitment of employees will present new challenges, especially in terms of maintaining morale in an environment in which future employment cannot be guaranteed.Much has been said in modern management literature about the difference between management (seen as a maintenance function aimed at 'doing things right') and leadership (seen as a process of strategic change concerned with 'doing the right things'). Such distinctions are further complicated by the notions of transactional leadership (defined as guiding a process of evolutionary or incremental change towards the achievement of clearly defined goals) and transformational leadership (initiating revolutionary, radical change inspired by a new strategic vision).

While the success of some well publicised organisational change programmes has been explained in terms of the 'top-down', vision-led approach of assertive leaders, similar reforms have been related to 'bottom-up', facilitating leadership styles. Looking to the future, the need for transformational change will be ever increasing, but the days of the 'heroic' leader are on the wane, as the consequences of creating an over-dependent culture are more clearly recognised. Increasingly, organisations are seeking to develop 'managerial leadership' at all levels, through a flexible combination of a range of skills and styles:

Organisations need to combine:

• Administrative Leadership: getting things done


• Supervisory Leadership: doing things right


• Strategic Leadership: doing the right things


• Inspirational Leadership: inspiring the doing

While the first three elements appear very analytical, the fourth is about putting the 'heart', as well as the 'head', into the leadership mix. Successful leaders of the future will not adopt either the 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' view of change, but will build on the strengths of both approaches to develop 'forthright and listening' leadership which combines assertive behaviour with responsiveness to others.

The way forward
There is often a tendency to develop a 'wish list' of the perfect manager, but deeper analysis reveals a surprising consistency about the key competencies required of the manager of the future. This consistency lies more at the level of attitudes than skills: where managers need to develop a 'mindset' which is constantly in tune with both the internal organisational context and the complex and turbulent business environment. This mindset encompasses a number of inherent demands and tensions:

• The need for managers to have a strong sense of the whole organisation to underpin their internal interactions, while at the same time being acutely aware of the external environment, to anticipate and respond to its constant changes.


• A heavy emphasis on task or 'doing' skills to achieve high performance and successful outcomes, while at the same time, the way in which managers approach tasks will be equally important, requiring highly developed behavioural skills.


• A healthy scepticism towards theory and a focus on action, while at the same time, placing value on reflection and looking ahead, with 'strategic thinking' being the priority skill for the future.


• Individuals will need to take on responsibility for their own development, being no longer able to rely on career ladders within one organisation, while at the same time, the key role of teams is being emphasised, requiring the skills to collaborate with other people in temporary and non-hierarchical groups.

While these multiple dilemmas and paradoxes may initially strike fear and trepidation into the hearts of managers responsible for leading their organisations forward, the key challenge can be expressed much more encouragingly in the words of Thomas Crum: