Leadership in the 21st century: what is it about?



The 21^st century is the century of information and globalism. Overabundance of information and technological advances make everything change, lead to global alterations. Subsequently, leadership and management have become the most studied area of today’s business life. New ways of thinking change the view of a leadership landscape. Leaders have an important role within an organization related to its success, productivity and the performance of the employees. Leadership is not just a word rather leadership is a process of social influence of one person on others to aid and support their role in order to achieve the combined purpose. Leadership is thus not a role or a position, but an act of achieving the tasks assigned. So being a leader is an adventure because the whole situation of success and failure surrounds the leader’s role. This paper is directed to explain the differences between the 20^th and 21^st century business landscape and how leaders have unique challenges to be successful in the future.

Keywords: leadership, management, knowledge, achieving finite goals, strategies

The Leadership Landscape of the 20^th Century: “The twentieth century leader’s job was about moving goods while the twenty-first century leader is about moving people.” This statement is quite widespread nowadays among companies’ executives because modern changes in the leadership landscape are tangible and significant. The base of management has changed, leading to new features, values, strategies, and goals [4]. The leadership landscape of the 20^th brings management to the key directions and trends that are the base for today’s leadership’s characteristics. The century was filled with revolutions, wars, and breakthroughs. All these factors changed the systems and formulate management (leadership) as a particular science. The experts of that time implemented and developed various principles of scientific management that are still popular. As a result, the leadership landscape of the 20^th elaborated six separate branches (financial management, strategic management, information technology management, marketing management, operations management, and human resource management) [5]. All these branches were developed in a very general way; each sphere of management was quiet new and novel. Moreover, experts did not pay a lot of attention to the role of a leader in the structure of these management departments. Because of it, leadership landscape of the 20^th century was very “fresh” and unexplored. The basic responsibilities of leaders were control, understanding, reporting, and desire to work.

The most important purpose for the business of 20^th century was to build an economy, to make new systems work. That is why management of that time was about achieving finite goals: delivering goods and services, making money. All companies started to research the market finding new ideas and solutions for creating the demand to earn more profit. However, a few organizations thought about companies’ internal world: employees, organizational structure or corporate standards. Moreover, because of shortage of information and data, companies were not able to forecast the future and predict external changes [2]. Generally, leadership of 20^th century made a revolutionary step: it made the world become open and start to interact. Due to these interactions such working positions as leader, manager had appeared. Clear understating of those positions started to arise only in the 21^st century.

The Leadership Landscape of the 21^st Century: The 21^st century has become the era of information, globalism, and uncertainty. The role of everything has started to change. Leadership and management have become the most studied areas of business life. 20^th century built a base for development in the 21^st century. Companies have become more experienced and persistent. The economy has stabilized for a while. All these factors have made organizations move their attention from money and profit to people. As a result, new goal of management has started to exist — the infinite goal of delighting customers. One of the first scientists, who started thinking about people-centered management, was Peter Drucker, an American management consultant and educator. In 1993 in one of his speeches he said that he was interested in the behavior of people. Drucker was the first one to see clearly that the purpose of a firm is not to make money [3]. He always stated that the only valid goal of a company is to create a customer.

Changing in management style has led changing in a leadership landscape [2]. Today people-centered management dictates new conditions for leaders and made them change settled attitude to the companies and market. The following are the criteria and new views of management, which leaders of the 21^st century should take into consideration.

Table 1

The criteria and new views of the 21^st century leaders

Criteria	Description
Being open	leaders should stimulate themselves always to look for unknown knowledge; it will create awareness for changes and opportunities that are coming their way; it will sharpen their views on what is going around their companies (Girard, 2013).
Start working at the top	Although each employee starts his job at the first level of an organization, all successful change management initiatives decide to start at the top and work with well-aligned group of executives supported by the CEO. The experience of working together could led to productive results and formulate one single “language” for the group of workers.
Build understanding	leaders should never reject or judge anything new before they get the full understanding of it; leader’s open mindset will help him to find the right direction; it creates respect between people and takes away the fear of the unknown.
Creating synergies	managers should always aim at finding and exploiting potential synergies, this is opening the door for win-win situations; it generates motivation and positive energy; it builds trust between people, and generates actions that turn change into sustainable success.
New way of thinking	Managers have started to shift their formal and informal elements of behavior. It helps them to become clear communicators, who are able to explain personal way of thinking.
Engage and engage	Powerful and sustained change requires constant communication, not only throughout the rollout but after the major elements of the plan are in place. Leaders should involve as much as possible ways of communication.
Adaptability	Leaders should take time to find out what is working for companies the best way and what is not working at all.
Sustainability	All actions and events that happen in a present would affect the future. Leaders must thoroughly develop all systems and details to create desired future. Moreover, modern companies must think about sustainability because they could prevent future global problems (water scarcity, pollution, etc.).
Filling generational gaps	To build a “bridge” between generations and to fill gaps, leaders should develop and use various strategies to find similarities and, subsequently, work with these similarities.

The criteria written above help companies understand the leadership challenge of the volatile, globalized, hyper connected age more clearly.

Conclusion. Organizational structure of 20^th century was based on a linear goal of making money by delivering goods and services to the end users. Thus the goal was finite and the organizational structure was simple as just a finite goal was to be achieved. In contrast in the 21^st century the goal became infinite and organizations had to meet multiple objectives like making money, delighting the customers, balancing the interests of all stakeholders etc. As such the organizational structure becomes more evolved in the 21^st century with increased focus on structures and processes to optimize operations [1].In the 20^th century the environment was corporation friendly as companies were able to manipulate its customers to maximize the sale of its products. The environment or the system of the 20^th century became an end in itself. In the 21^st century the system became highly dynamic. Customers could no longer be manipulated and the system emerged as the means to achieve the end.Value creation in the 20^th century was achieved through a focus on ‘economies of scale’. The focus was the increase the scale of operations. In the 21^st century focus was on innovation as well as on economies of scope.

In the 20^th century the business landscape was highly unstable as it was marred by events like wars and revolutions. As such the focus was more on scientific management of an organization and this resulted in lower focus on the role of leadership. The role of a leader was limited to control and reporting. In the 21^st century the business landscape changed drastically and became more stable. This put the spotlight on leaders and they were regarded as agents of change in an organization. The role of a leader grew by leaps and bounds and leaders were supposed to inspire and motivate employees, provide direction, develop strategy and help the organization achieve its goals and objectives in the most effective and efficient manner.

In the future the differences between a leader and a manager will become more profound. The leader will serve as a guiding light and a guiding force while the manager will work towards implementation of the strategy. Challenges for a leader in the 21^st century are to spot new opportunities that will add value to the organization. As the business environment has become dynamic and intensity of competition is increasing leaders will have to find ways to develop products that will serve the needs and requirements of the consumers more meaningfully. Leaders must be people centric. This is because employees are human beings and as such they are guided by their hearts as well as minds. Thus a leader has to ensure that the culture, vision and mission of the organization is in sync with the employees and this will propel the employees to increase their productivity [6].

Again, the 21^st century has become the century of information and globalism. This is the era of uncertainty, which managers must blow over. Modern leadership landscape brings new directions of change. Creation of leadership styles and structures focused around people and their needs is the most important direction.

References:

1. Bruce S. (2015). The 4 Essential Characteristics of 21st-Century Leadership. Retrieved from http://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2015/02/09/the-4-essential-characteristics-of-21st-century-leadership/
2. Denning S. (2010). The Biggest Difference Between 20^th and 21^st Century Management.Retrieved from http://stevedenning.typepad.com/steve_denning/2010/08/the-biggest-difference-between-20th-and-21st-century-management.html
3. Denning S. (2013). The Founder of 21st Century Management: Peter Drucker. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/03/01/the-founder-of-21st-century-management-peter-drucker/
4. Girard K. (2013). Built for Global Competition from the Start. Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/built-for-global-competition-from-the-start
5. Strock J. (2016). 21st Century Leadership vs 20th Century Leadership. Retrieved from http://servetolead.org/21st-century-leadership-vs-20th-century-leadership/
6. Wegner, L. (2014). Organizational leaders and empowered employees: The relationship between leadership styles, perception of styles, and the impact on organizational outcomes. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(1), 515–517.