Executive Outlook
Are your leaders two years ahead? By Mats-Ola Bydell and Slim Lambert
April 2012 Mats-Ola Bydell is a Senior Client Partner and Partner in Charge of the Stockholm office of Korn/Ferry International, where he is a member of the Firm’s Global Industrial Market and Korn/Ferry Leadership and Talent Consulting.
Slim Lambert is a Principal with Korn/Ferry International’s Leadership and Talent Consulting group, located in the Firm’s Stockholm office.
Why are some business leaders regularly two years ahead of others? They ramped up business in Colombia while others were still dipping toes into Brazil. They divested from mortgage-backed securities in 2004. They were using “clouds” before anyone else knew what the term meant. Even flourishing business leaders will admit that success relies on a bit of talent and a lot of hard work. Still, there are a few who anticipate threats or opportunities first, act upon that, and repeat the feat again and again. What is this talent to see around corners? Can it be identified by looking at underlying capabilities? Drawing on Korn/Ferry’s research, its consultants’ expertise, and the experience of our clients and candidates, it appears that the traits of this two-years-ahead executive can be grouped into four categories.
Knows the business, and knows it in detail Apple founder Steve Jobs would not have succeeded to the astounding degree he did in another industry. He understood personal computing inside out, from the operating
systems to the hardware to the design. He could look at what was possible now, and envision what would be possible in a decade. Like Jobs, two-years-ahead leaders know their industry in great depth, a cluster of competencies Korn/ Ferry calls Understanding the Business, which fuses business acumen with superior functional or technical skills. They are in tune with—and passionate about—the needs of customers, which drives them to attend to details and quality, and informs their creative and strategic thinking. They also are experiential, rather than theoretical, revealing highlevel skills in another cluster, Making Complex Decisions. They use facts and hard data to construct a working concept and then realitytest it, rather than fall back on ready-made theories. They view the execution of business strategy as a