By John Granger
There is a glib and massively over-used phrase that permeates consulting: 'What keeps CEOs awake at night?'. Ten years ago however, IBM's consulting arm—Global Business Services—started sitting down with thousands of CEOs to explore a far more pressing agenda; that being what CEOs are doing by day to differentiate their organizations, to transform their businesses and succeed in an increasingly complex and competitive global environment.
A decade on, IBM recently published the results of its 2012 Global CEO Study, the fifth of its biennial deep-dive examinations into the attitudes and opinions of global business leaders.
Based on face-to-face interviews with more than 1,700 CEOs, representing 18 industries across 64 countries, the study provides an unparalleled insight into the zeitgeist of global business, as well as valuable data for IBM consultants who advise these clients and implement solutions on their behalf.
Somewhat remarkably, particularly given the state of many parts of the global economy, CEOs didn't identify regulation, market forces or even competitive pressure as the most important driver of business change in 2012. Instead, they pointed for the first time to technology as their top priority – reflecting the dynamics of a massively interconnected world, the rapid nature of change, and the immediacy of the business environment.
Perhaps just as striking, is that they expect the impact of technology to be most acute in terms of how their organizations will engage with people: employees or customers, business partners or investors, regulators or prospective new hires.
Based on this, I believe we can see a significant shift in prevailing wisdom; suggesting that rather than de-humanizing business relationships, technologies are actually reframing, re-personalizing and reinventing them. And, with that shift comes great possibility; from the foundations of innovation to the ability of companies to establish ever more intimate client relationships.
Collaboration: The Innovation Nexus
According to the study, CEOs say organizational effectiveness will increasingly rely on open and collaborative cultures. Far more frequently, employees are connecting with each other and the outside world not only to drive innovation in everything from product development to sales, marketing and human resource management, but also for personal learning and the acquisition of market-valued skills.
Based on study feedback, collaboration is an increasingly 'top down' endeavor, driven throughout the organization and embracing client partnership. When CEOs were asked to what extent they will sustain or make changes to their organization in the near future, "collaboration with other organizations" polled highest, with 53 percent of CEOs suggesting that partnering is high on the agenda. Factor in lessons learned from the study's 'outperformers', (those participating companies displaying high growth and high profitability relative to other surveyed peers), and we see that outperformers are 28 percent more likely to partner extensively for innovation than underperformers.
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