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BUSINESS AND TRAINING
enabling their organisations to succeed in four areas:
society, strategy, technology, and talent. In addition to
our search for year-to-year trends, though, we also
aimed to uncover how leaders are moving forward,
where they are making the most progress, and what
sets the most effective leaders apart.
While many executives continue to struggle with
navigating the complexity of Industry 4.0, certain
leaders appeared to be “getting it right”. We found
four distinct leadership personas that, we believe,
can provide guideposts for executives and serve as
models for leaders around the world as they tackle
the challenges associated with digital transformation.
Before exploring those personas, though, it’s helpful
to understand the survey’s key findings.
The survey showed the following:
• Poor leadership could be the biggest barrier to a
successful Fourth Industrial Revolution strategy.
• In the past year, nearly three-quarters of
respondents said their organisations had taken
steps to make or change products or services
with societal impact in mind. Many are motivated
by the promise of new revenue and growth.
• Executives are struggling to develop effective
strategies in today’s rapidly changing markets.
Faced with an ever-increasing array of new
technologies, leaders said they had difficulty
understanding all the new technology-driven
opportunities, and in some cases, they lack the
strategic vision to guide their efforts.
• Many leaders reported that their companies
don’t follow clearly defined decision-making
processes, and that organisational silos limit
their abilities to develop and share knowledge to
implement effective strategies.
• Executives expressed a genuine commitment to
improving the world.
• Leaders rated societal impact as the most
important factor when evaluating their
organisations’ annual performance, ahead of
financial performance and customer or employee
satisfaction.
Top challenges in changing strategy for Industry 4.0 (respondents were asked to rank top three challenges).
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September 2019 Volume 25 I Number 7