Swedish companies and organizations are increasingly exposed to global competition and this is also happening at home. How do our leaders need to develop to meet this?
This is a big question that naturally has many answers. One is that both leaders and organizations must have a strong focus on the future, based on the assumption that rapid change is normal and will constantly present both new opportunities and challenges.
The ability to question the current direction, quickly reassess and perhaps even scrap what seemed like a stable way forward last week to change track and implement a completely new idea will be essential for companies to survive in a global context. It won't be possible to get it right every time, but the speed of change will be a crucial factor.
The leaders of the future have worked hard on their personal development to be genuinely grounded and confident in a world of change. They need to be comfortable with constantly trying new approaches without relying on their own or others' experience and instead have the courage to test and correct the new along the way.
Does our school system support the development of future leaders and employees?
I am not so sure. After all, schools have the complex task of educating for an era that looks nothing like the one we have now. Many of our professions are disappearing, new ones are emerging, and the structure of the labor market will look different, and no one can say exactly how.
Therefore, I think we need to ensure that our young people get more skills from school. Knowledge is of course still central, but unlike skills, it can be supplemented on demand in different ways. However, we need to develop empathetic, confident people with good self-esteem from childhood and adolescence who are good at forming close relationships, cooperating, thinking laterally, solving problems and seeking and critically assessing information. We need to succeed better than today because it gives them important conditions for both leading themselves and others.
But do we need leaders in the organizations of the future?
Absolutely, but maybe everyone is a leader instead of some? So the question is instead whether we need managers in that case? The hierarchical, pyramid-like organization has been successful during industrialism, at a time when the environment was more predictable. But it is now a few years old and too slow to change.
Today, self-organizing companies are emerging whose structures cannot be put on paper. Yet they work, are fast, have flexibility in their DNA, manage to attract the skills they need and are taking market share from more traditional players.

About 15 years ago, the concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) was created. Is it more relevant today?
The idea of companies taking responsibility for their environmental, economic and social impact on society from a sustainability perspective is very much alive. In the past, it was often about how companies could optimize their shareholder value through social benefit for profit at both ends. But today, many more people expect those we buy from or work for to have a higher purpose and take responsibility that goes far beyond keeping shareholders happy.
In the Harward Business Review, a survey was presented where 90% of respondents would consider a lower salary if they had the opportunity to work but something that they felt was meaningful. Perhaps because today there is a widespread awareness of the earth's finite resources, of climate impact and increased polarization. I feel a greater willingness to seriously find a higher purpose and tackle the big issues today. Perhaps the pandemic and Greta Thunberg have in various ways helped to increase the level of urgency, but we are also beginning to see the effects of the fact that these issues have not been in sufficient focus in the past.
Meeting consumers' and employees' desire for sustainable behavior is increasingly important from a competitive perspective as well. Today, as we know, we can buy both goods and services from all over the world online. In addition, digitization enables a global labor market where I can already sit in Sveg and work for a company in Singapore. But choosing a Swedish supplier or a Swedish employer could definitely be a choice for environmental, economic and social sustainability. Here I think we would be wise to listen to our millennials, who generally take a stronger stand on these issues.