Turbulent times require future-fit leadership – and education is the answer
29 August 2024 - CISL CEO, Lindsay Hooper, reflects on the unique role educational institutes can play preparing leaders to adapt to complex challenges - and lead the transition to cleaner, greener, fairer and more prosperous economies.
The challenges facing today’s leaders are of a different order of complexity than in the recent past. Crises no longer present themselves in isolation, but as part of an interconnected and hugely complex web, creating volatile, uncertain, and ambiguous operating conditions for business and society.
Disruption and transition are inevitable, and advances in technology, competition from disruptors, evolving societal norms and the interconnected climate and nature crises means that the pace of change is increasing and the pathways uncertain. Leaders must not only anticipate and keep pace with these shifts, but proactively shape the future, finding sustainable ways to create value, whilst delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals, and, for those in the private sector, to do so profitably.
While predicting the future with certainty is impossible, and no-one can provide a blueprint for guaranteed success, education (in the sense of building capacity, not simply transferring static knowledge) plays a vital role in enabling leaders to prepare and adapt for disruption and ultimately lead the transition to a cleaner, fairer and more prosperous economy.
The ESG paradigm shift and navigating the era of misinformation
Many of today’s leaders were educated in an era with entirely different characteristics. One in which business action to address macro social and environmental trends was seen as optional at best; a distraction at worst, and as being solely a question of reputation enhancement and placating vocal stakeholders. Most have learned rapidly on the job over recent years. They will have been pulled by the markets through the ESG hype years, and now left between a rock and a hard place as market sentiment has shifted, yet the underlying risks and requirements for change grow ever more pressing.
There is a very real risk that as social and environmental challenges escalate, leaders become trapped in firefighting the symptoms of unsustainable practices, unable to get upstream to tackle the root causes. Education has a valuable role to play here, providing an opportunity to broaden leaders’ understanding and perspective, and find confidence to ask bigger questions and make decisions in an era defined by misinformation, whether through vested interests or simply ill-informed sources. This allows leaders to see the bigger, longer-range picture, to identify emerging risks and seize opportunities.
It isn’t only a question of seeing the bigger picture – although that is valuable. Senior leaders today are increasingly held accountable for their organisations’ environmental impact and disclosures, social contributions (and impacts), and governance practices, alongside operational and commercial performance. In this context, education from reputable institutions, such as CISL, provides the necessary upskilling, demonstrating a commitment to understanding and tackling complex sustainability challenges.
Pushing boundaries through innovation and shifting mindsets
Beyond updating knowledge, building capacity and providing a solid foundation for decision-making, education serves as a catalyst for innovation. By its nature, it frames thinking for the long term, based on fundamental needs, not whims and short-term markets. It fosters new ideas, and the rethinking of old ones, unlocks potential opportunities, and opens new avenues for growth and value creation. Equally importantly, it cultivates new mindsets and capabilities.
Leaders today need to be able drive change across entire markets. They must be equipped to step into the unknown, to pilot solutions where they don’t yet exist, to have the courage to speak up confidently and build support for changes that will be good for the organisation and good for society, without fear of backlash.
At its best, education can provide all of this. It can offer an inspiring and constructively challenging space to test one’s thinking, identify and address blind spots, develop a frame of reference for tough decisions, and build a network of supportive peers, allies and mentors.
How we help leaders in this context
- We don’t provide all the answers. Instead, we encourage leaders to develop their own strategies and solutions, tailored to their unique contexts.
- We provide teaching and strategic inputs grounded in evidence, underpinned by a research base and insights from our work with industry and policy.
- We provide access to globally relevant, leading-edge thinking and practice tailored to be relevant to our learners’ operating context. Our learning design is rooted in both best-practice, practical experience as well as theoretical underpinning.
- We encourage participants to not only learn from ‘what good currently looks like’, but to innovate and generate new ideas and approaches to what an adequate response could and should look like, to raise the bar for leadership.
- We provide learners with a breadth of perspectives on contested topics and a trusting, safe space for debate.
- We expose participants to people who think differently to them, who may challenge their assumptions and from whom they can learn.
- We help participants navigate the dynamics of real-world change, recognising that many leadership challenges are not technical challenges, but communication, social and political challenges.
Society today needs leaders who are aware, informed and engaged with the challenges they are likely to face, who can innovate and trust their instincts when big decisions need to be made, and who have the confidence to challenge unsustainable or short-sighted practices.
At CISL, this is one of the reasons we continue to work with leaders globally, to address the challenges we face as a society. Because, unless we have leadership that can advocate for the future we want, we are unlikely to see the action we need to deliver a future at all.
We hope that, by finding and engaging leaders who want to make a difference, we can continue to bend the curve towards a sustainable economy.
In this turbulent world, where the ride is only getting wilder, investing in education isn't just a choice, it's a necessity.