The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity
The 2010 Global IBM CEO Study was recently published. 1 541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from 60 countries and across 33 industries are surveyed by one-on-one interviews. The four primary findings of survey are as follows:
- Today’s complexity is only expected to rise and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it.
- Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs.
- The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes.
- Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners.
Globalization and technology are major factors contributing to growing complexity. Leaders world-wide are experiencing high levels of complexity and uncertainty, which creates an urgent need for leadership. Given this, the survey explored what CEOs consider to be the most important leadership qualities that would be required over the next five years, the results are illustrated below.
Creativity is essential when uncertainty is high and where the future is expected to be a significant departure from what we’ve known in the past. When uncertainty is high you cannot just repeat the successful practices of the past and expect similar results. You will need to find new ways of thinking, new ways of operating and new ways of behaving.
References:
http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2010/05/the-2010-ibm-global-ceo-study.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/1648943/creativity-the-most-important-leadership-quality-for-ceos-study
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2010/id20100517_190221.htm
