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Next generation leaders

Deloitte describes the types of leaders succeeding in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.


Deloitte, an international provider of consulting services, believes that effective managers make investments today to drive disruption in traditional markets. They can promptly monetise innovations and keep looking for business opportunities to deal with important challenges faced by humanity.

The authors of the new study identified four leadership personas capable of enhancing efficiency in an era of change and uncertainty driven by the transition to Industry 4.0 (production and business changes brought about by the mass implementation of cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, etc.).

“Our research has uncovered four distinct types of leaders succeeding in Industry 4.0. These leaders are achieving greater revenue growth than their counterparts, in part, because they have conquered at least one, and sometimes more, of the dimensions required for success,” said PunitRenjen, Deloitte Global CEO, commenting on the findings of the report titled “Success Personified in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Four Leadership Personas for an Era of Change and Uncertainty”.

Effective managers keep looking for business opportunities to deal with important challenges faced by humanity.

The report also provides a list of common threads seen across the most effective modern leadership types. Those include a commitment to doing good, assertiveness, longer-term lens on technology investments, data-driven insights in decision-making, and taking the lead on workforce development.

The research highlights the following effective leadership personas:

• Social Supers succeeded by generating new revenue streams through socially or environmentally conscious products or services. These leaders appear more likely than others to invest in new technologies to disrupt the market (42% versus 29% of everyone else) and demonstrate a far greater willingness to train their workers (54% versus 37%). Further, they reported deeper concern with the ethical use of new technologies (39% versus 26%).

• Data-Driven Decisives. 62% of these leaders are ready to lead their organisations in capitalising on the opportunities associated with new technologies, which is almost twice as many as other leaders surveyed (32%): almost half (46%) of organisations led by Data-Driven Decisives in 2018 generated 5% or greater annual revenue growth. Such leaders believe that their organisations possess the correct workforce composition and skill sets needed for new technologies and business models.

• Disruption Drivers invest in technologies to upend their markets. They have made technology investments that have achieved or exceeded their intended business outcomes. These leaders are more likely to say they feel ready to lead in the Industry 4.0 era (45% versus 32% of other leaders).

• Talent Champions They believe that they know what skill sets their companies need today. They embrace their responsibilities to train employees for digital transformation and invest in the development of corporate culture (51% versus 41% of all other executives). They are also more likely to invest in technologies to disrupt competitors (42% versus 32%). The research is based on a survey of 2,042 global executives conducted by Forbes Insights in June–August 2018. Survey respondents represented 19 countries from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. All executives represented organisations with revenue of USD 1 billion or more, with half (50.1%) coming from organisations with more than USD 5 billion in revenue.

Source: RBC


Industry 4.0 leadership research

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