The final push for generational leadership change is about to happen

COVID-19 is really the crisis Generations X and Y needed to stimulate and justify the final push to flush out the baby boomers hanging onto lucrative executive and board sinecures. Vaccinating the organisation against technological luddites and those still lunching out on the hedonistic memories of the 80s will be pursued with zeal.

It will be a valid program of transformation. Those who thought that after virtually two decades of uninterrupted growth that emerging leaders would not be equipped to handle a major crisis have been silenced by coronavirus. Emerging leaders have done very well on the whole at both political and business levels.

The pandemic has quickly morphed 10-year transformation plans into this year’s business plan. Pragmatic businesses will not let the COVID-19 crisis go to waste and will take the opportunity to pull forward restructuring plans as employees transition back into the workplace.

The crisis will make some of the difficult decisions about reconfiguring the skills matrix - jettisoning some of the entrenched executive and senior management team and refreshing from the more fluid talent pool created by the crisis. The awkwardness of the tough decisions, having the hard conversations and stumping up the redundancy and severance payments have been shaded by the hard-edged reality of survive and thrive over the next three years.

The Xs and Ys will be the primary beneficiaries and, like generations before them, will primarily recruit people who look like themselves, those who are dealing with the same economic, environmental and social challenges outside of work as well as transformation inside the workplace.

The cultural shift had already started before COVID, but it is set to accelerate. ‘Digital’ will thankfully disappear from work titles and position descriptions, accepted as inherent in every job rather than signpost a revolution that began a quarter century ago. There will be no future in the workforce for those who do not have digital DNA.

The digital natives will consolidate the innovation and capability evolved by previous generations into the genetics of the next great wave of non-hierarchical organisational structures, integrated artificial intelligence and quantum computing, all driving towards a circular economy.

As an older citizen, even perhaps having been on the spectrum of being a visionary and innovative employee, it will be hard to maintain pace with the speed of change, which will surpass anything ever experienced before. But where older employees with leadership talent and experience may best fit in, is mentoring the multiple and moral judgement calls that rapid change and capability will demand.

Questions of the ownership of personal data and individual privacy, establishing boundaries and ensuring humans remain in control of the capabilities of artificial intelligence coupled with quantum computing power, engineering a social manifest that maintains equity in the sharing of the social and economic benefits of human progress and ingenuity, are all issues of governance that may benefit from the perspective and experience of senior counsel.

Some estimate knowledge is doubling every few months^, some even suggest every twelve hours*. It’s a rate of change unprecedented in human experience and beyond the capacity of individuals or even substantial groups of persons to absorb, analyse and apply.

Senior practitioners can bring the unique software of experience, positive and negative, to the table. It is human software impossible to program that is adept at filtering against known outcomes, neural connections with events and perspectives not captured or searchable on the web.

It is time for generational leadership change, but also for trans-generational collaboration.