How The DNA of Future CEOs and their Teams Will Change

In an era marked by rapid technological change, global competition and interconnectedness, the future CEOs, their role, and their teams will evolve faster and very differently.

How can their roles and the skills they need not change? We are at the beginning of creating intelligent organizations that will be run by humans and artificial intelligence, the humans will be the creators and the artificial intelligence that interactive data bank with all the company’s history There should be no doubt about this. No, it will not be sentient. However, a brand’s intelligence equate to brand resilience, something that has been lacking in many businesses and industries. As someone who has held the CEO role and serves as a board chair hiring CEOs, my perspective is grounded in what the future of business will look like and who can lead them.

So, what will the core traits of future CEOs be? Well, we will still need leaders who are visionaries, with strategic foresight, both anticipating and creating trends instead of chasing them. The old guard today is spending too much time in the analog and early stages of the digital world. And they will be fiercely innovative, that’s what the intelligence aspects that AI has to offer should be able to deliver. They will need a high level of emotional intelligence, such as empathy and effective communication. Change will be so rapid and responses to competitive shifts will be unbelievably fast that emotional intelligence should help the organization move forward and deal with all of it. Agility and adaptability will be key as a competitive landscape will require responsive decision making and an orientation to help the organization learn. The CEO, their leadership team and the board directors will have to rethink and elevate their ethical leadership, in areas like integrity, building trust through transparency and accountability owning all of the changes that are made or not made which can affect the organizational performance, customers, employees and suppliers. And they will lead with technological proficiency from digital literacy to utilizing analytics for insight.

The Essential Qualities of their teams will mimic their CEO’s. However, they will also practice collaboration gone will be the days of silos. Alignment in goals, embracing digital tools as an extension of themselves and that of the organization. Their nature to be highly adaptive and resilient to challenges will be the skills that every organization will need as they embrace AI to industrialize organizations into AI-Factories. Above all, they will innovate and lead the way in developing and harnessing the power of their new found intelligence, to creatively solve problems and be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to the marketplace. They will work in multi-disciplinary teams to improve the organization’s market position and performance.

The risk to the future generation of leaders is to heed advice that they do not need to change. However, everyone will have to even consulting firms and advisors without the power of AI they will be seen outdated and ill prepared to help businesses learn, adapt and become revolutionary innovators.

Over this next five year period we will see significant hurdles in the challenges CEOs and their teams will face. Companies that need to transform themselves into technology-first organizations will be reviewing their competencies and capabilities to bring about these transformations and internal changes are more than likely.

The rewards will go to those leaders who have prepared themselves for this moment.