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According to Georg Vielmetter, Yvonne Sell’s book Leadership 2030: Six Megatrends You Must Understand to Lead Your Business into the Future, “Change” is in the air. “We challenge the status quo because it is likely that the business world will change.” It is a book that aims at educating leaders on what they need to know now to prepare themselves and their businesses to face the challenges of the future.
Their research revealed six megatrends that will impact how we work in the future. According to their definition, a megatrend is “a long-term, transformational process that has global reach, broad scope and a fundamentally significant impact.” The rest of the book focuses on these six megatrends and how businesses can leverage them to their advantage.
Although it is interesting, I don’t think we can expect them to be in effect until 2030. These are the 6 megatrends. How many of them are you currently facing in your projects?
Six Trends that Impact Leadership
Globalisation 2.0
There is a shift in power to developing markets like China. This means leaders will need to have a context-based approach, agile project structures, the ability adapt to local markets while operating corporately and conceptual thinking.
Environmental crisis
Businesses will need to change the way they do business. The authors say that small changes are not enough. We will also be working with competitors to achieve environmental benefits and new types of projects will be developed on topics like carbon reduction. Consumers will expect businesses to be able justify their environmental credentials.
Individualism and value plurality
Through the internet and global media, people are exposed to cultural influences from around the world. They want to be treated like individuals. Businesses will need to ensure that projects that deliver products offer the option of customizing and customizing the final result to meet their needs. The expectations of work have changed. We can conclude that project teams will be affected by this change. Meaningful work and a healthy lifestyle are two important criteria for job candidates. Vielmetter and Sell’s research showed that young people are choosing to work less because they are looking for better lifestyles and are not prepared to work the long hours of 10 years ago. This could create a problem for the project leadership talent gap, which Mark Langley discussed at PMI Synergy last spring.
Digitalisation
This means that business leaders and project managers will need to be aware of the importance of IT systems and the skills needed to manage remote teams. Integrity and reputation management are now even more important (but you already manage you online reputation). ).
Demographic changes
Global workforce shrinking as people age and have fewer children. The authors state that businesses will no longer be able “to marginalise women candidates when it comes down to senior positions.” Companies will have to be more open to women in their boards because of the global talent shortage. I don’t like the sound of businesses being forced to allow women to the C-suite due to a lack of suitable male candidates. But we must make advances wherever we can.
Technological convergence
This means that diverse branches of science are being combined, so we end with advanced robotics technology and nanotechnologies. Businesses will need to learn to accept uncertainty and plan to innovate ethically. Scientists will need to find a way to combine the tried-and-trued, but very different, procedures of, for example, IT project management.