What different leadership style or strategies are needed now?
My advice to people is go back to the basics, look at how you’re doing things, see how you can use this technology. The past few years were all about buying a lot and putting things in place because the competition was doing it. Now everyone is slowing down and the challenge is how can we extract value from this? Take the example of electric motors. It shows how people historically always have to learn how to adapt old processes to new technology. When plants were water-powered, everyone hooked the belt [of their different machines] to the [main water-powered] shaft. They were organized in a straight line tied to the shaft. So, when the electric motors came along, they were still organized that way. But electric motors gave them more flexibility to redo their assembly lines and plants. They had to rethink where they put machines, how to take advantage of the new flexibility. Q: What are the key CEO skills now? A: I think it comes down to getting the details right. In many cases, it’s a
