This all happened a long time ago; now we can see a much more widespread desire for ‘alternative’ forms of political and business leadership. The command-and-control approach that has prevailed for very many years, where a narrow elite tells other people what to do, is rapidly ineffective in a networked world. There is much less deference to those in official leadership roles; leaders need to merit their authority. So the role is less about sitting at the top of a pyramid and giving orders, more about positioning oneself at the centre of influence. I felt this acutely as Newton’s new CEO: one minute I was one of many fund managers, the next I was officially the boss, but not in a position to instruct my colleagues. Instead, my role was to lead by influencing them, having first listened to what was on their minds, then to form a plan that took account of their views (or explain why I was going in a different direction), and bring them with me. This was partly the result of the circumstances of my appointment but it’s also a feature of active investment management firms, since talented investors often see themselves as self-employable. The CEO is more akin to the conductor of an orchestra than a prima donna. This leadership model is becoming the reality for many other industries, and in politics too.
Many people see the shock events of 2016 – most notably Brexit and the election of President Trump – as setbacks for diversity. Of course, at the time no one asked voters to indicate the reasons why they voted the way they did, and all sorts of interpretations can be offered. In my view, while the specific reasons vary, the fact that in both the UK and the US many people voted against the establishment is key. The shocks themselves demonstrate how power is changing in a way that should be good news for democracy and equality. People will no longer be told what to do by leaders who don’t connect with them. The problem is, if this isn’t recognised and addressed, the protests morph into extremism.
I was flying back from a business trip in Denver on the evening of the UK’s EU referendum in June 2016. As we landed, everyone checked their phones for the result and an American lady tapped me on the shoulder; ‘It was Remain, right?’ ‘No actually, Leave won,’ I replied. She looked perplexed and exclaimed, genuinely shocked, ‘But we sent the President!’ She couldn’t see that this might have been a counterproductive move: the Americans ‘sent the President’; the British government dropped Remain leaflets on doorsteps, and people voted the exact opposite. In the US presidential election, it wasn’t enough of a change that Hillary Clinton was the first female nominee; she was also perceived as part of the establishment, as likely to maintain the status quo. Donald Trump’s comments make many of us wince, but during the election campaign, he reached out to those voters who were certainly not living the ‘American dream’, who had not participated in economic or income growth, who felt that no one was listening or cared – and he connected with them.
We have seen the desire for change many times before, of course, but technology makes it much more likely to be fulfilled. We now have an (almost) level playing field in our access to vast amounts of instant information. Anyone with a network and something interesting to say can influence others through social media, without any formal authority. And anything and everything is discoverable, exposing the humanity of leaders. There needs to be consistency in what they say and do, or their authority is undermined, potentially catastrophically. We keep seeing examples across many sectors and in policy-making circles too, where gaps between talk and action precipitate the downfall of those at the top.
This is a profound shift. Centuries-old, patriarchal power structures are being very rapidly replaced by more diffuse, shared and democratic influence. Different skills are needed to lead now, skills that, as we shall see, tend to favour women’s ways of working and behaving.
Not everyone recognises this yet. While there is an emerging realisation that being ‘in charge’ is not what it used to be, there is still only a vague appreciation of the wide-ranging ramifications. Much carries on as before, in big ways and small: I am frequently asked by executive search firms for my recommendations for ‘diverse’ board directors and am repeatedly disappointed by the ‘old school’ lists they show me. There is still a game of musical chairs at the top – and this is a mistake. In the US, around 80% of the fifty largest public companies are connected to each other through one or more shared board members; in the UK, the tendency is to ‘recycle’ FTSE-100 chairmen, making that prized role still very much a male bastion.
The wheels of change may be turning very slowly at the top but the broader power shift is not a short-lived surge in populism. Unless we put the technological genie back in the bottle, it is irreversible and means leaders, companies and policy-makers need quite different ways of thinking and skill sets to be relevant, successful and genuinely powerful. We talk blithely of ‘disruption’ in business – when revenue streams built over decades can be grabbed by start-ups over a matter of months, if not weeks – but few seem to have grasped that this extends to power structures too.
The far-reaching impacts of this power shift can be compared with the wide-ranging (and often breathtakingly fast) impact of the internet on many traditional businesses. The retail sector is an obvious example. Even the most traditional, ‘heritage’ retailers are forced to address the vast challenge of online shopping opportunities. A few firms have been the disrupters, others have embraced the change, a third group is plodding along, trying to catch up with shifts that have already happened. In the UK, a number of long-established high street brands have gone into receivership; others struggle to redefine their business. A walk down any British high street – now usually a string of coffee shops, restaurants, hairdressers, nail bars and dentists, alongside a few specialist stores – shows how dramatically our shopping habits have changed even over the past few years.
In 2006, nine retailers dominated the US market; Amazon accounted for just 4% of the group’s total market value. By 2016, Amazon was 55% of the total. With over 750 million mobile users – more than four times all of its competitors combined – it has, in the words of John Koetsier, ‘won retail’, reinventing how we buy and receive products. Amazon achieved this amazing feat by creating a personal (yet automated) connection with their customers, tracking their history and searches to understand their needs – and delivering great service. For retailers – and so many other sectors now – a digital strategy is not peripheral to the main event: it is the main event. Companies are all technology businesses now.
The irony is that to formulate (and continuously evolve) the right digital strategy, businesses need the right human minds – and that means the right combination of minds. It’s not a question of digital or human, but digital plus human.
Companies therefore need to take the optimisation of their talent seriously. The impact of getting it right or wrong may not be immediate, but any company that drags its feet in developing its collective human intelligence will be less likely to succeed than smarter competitors and increasingly disconnected from its customers. Astute companies are already working hard to develop the right ecosystems, where their diverse talent helps create an intelligent working environment and strong customer engagement.
Out of this arise exciting opportunities for equality, but we could too easily squander them by failing to see that today’s destabilising changes offer the moment for a leap forward in the quest for gender and other equalities. A continuation of the past would not have got us to where we want to be – even if, superficially, it might seem more benign. Whatever you think of Brexit and President Trump, these votes show that there is an urgent desire for new ways of thinking and new leadership. I think it has been a huge mistake for the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic to dig in their heels, to be dismissive of those who voted for Trump or for Britain to leave the EU, or to try to undermine other ‘protests’ (in Spain and Catalonia, Italy, Hungary, Poland … the list will continue to grow). Instead, we should be devoting all our energies to creating a constructive way forward. To those who say that’s a naïve hope, I challenge back: by talking and listening to each other, we soon see points of human connection, similar hopes and fears