Resetting the stage for the next millennium

THE DEDICATED band of young men and women who are being groomed for corporate governance in business and industry for the 21st Century, are the ones who will graduate in the next three years from the prestigious management/business schools of the country.

With the development of new strategies aiming at optimum focus on employee-customer relationship; and, notwithstanding the quantum jump in the expansion and diversification, the decision-makers of tomorrow will have no choice but to equip themselves with the state-of-the-art tools and techniques, to be successful. The future business-edifice, as has been aptly stressed by a leading business-house, would be supported by the four pillars, namely, customerisation, peoplisation, institutionalisation, and strategisation.

Opinions differ widely as to how to develop the CEOs of the future, so as to enable them to scale the challenging heights in an aggressively competitive world of economic regeneration. Knowledge, competence and team-building are the basic traits, time-tested and universally accepted transcending barriers of regions/ time-zones. But since the stakes would be high in the 21st century, these business leaders would need to imbibe additional inputs, professional/qualitative to cope up with their assigned tasks.

As the country's economic horizons stretch outwards, business leaders of the 21st century would need early baptisation in entrepreneurship. The mantle of building the organisation and also steering it through with a matching success, by providing a commensurate putsch, would fall on their shoulders. They would be the primary group-resource, their aim would be to make the whole organisation capable of making effective economic decisions. As complete managers they will have holistic perspective of the entire business.

An eye for innovation

``An eye for innovation'' would be the sine-qua-non; since it is only through systematic innovation that a competitive edge would be maintained and long-term strategic intent for economic regeneration would be developed. Innovation would become a part and parcel of the business activity and its close interaction with the organisation's resources and economic exploitation would need to be of a higher order.

The 21st century business leaders will deal with a workforce (in the changed scenario they will be in charge of work and not of people) which would be different from the earlier times. Hitherto, the thrust was on mastering the skills through constant practice; workers never got tempted to improve their qualifications. But with the massive expansion of education facilities, the next generation of workers will be highly qualified. They will work more with their minds rather than with their hands.

In the changed scenario, it will be the business leader's prerogative to preside-over the destinies of this enlightened lot and the worker's motivation will be a real challenge to his managerial acumen. Productivity linkages, where an upward growth is attributed to better standards of education of the workforce, such a backdrop is alien to our country. But the stage is already set in this direction and one cannot afford to ignore it.

The business leaders of tomorrow will be conducting business that will mostly operate beyond the national boundaries. It would be more and more multinational in the true sense of the word. Diverse cultures, multiplicity of traditions and ethnic backgrounds, need for fluency in partner country's language - even dealing with the workforce drawn from more than one country; these would be the environment in which the CEOs of 21st century will be conducting their operations.

Closer interaction

In the coming years, there would be a higher degree of interaction with various agencies, namely with Government institutions within the country and abroad, industrial houses, non-governmental organisations, United Nations organisations and even with the universities and research establishment. The business leaders will have to learn as to how these establishments function; what is the rationale of their operations, procedures and techniques and also their profitability profiles. Lastly, they will have to devise matrix to integrate the above parameters - to promote their own organisations.

The 21st century is a century of economy. Enhanced economic activity would give birth to new management tools. There would be ample challenges for the business leaders of tomorrow to develop a new technology-tactics mix and understand market, industry and business better than before.

D. C. Bakshi

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Section  : Business
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