The CEO of next Decade

There are many things that CEO’s need to prepare or to be ready to accept in the next decade – and it won’t be as easy as the previous one. There are many things to adapt to, like AI, IoT, blockchain, big data, EQ and MQ of employees, amongst others. Managing people and processes will also be challenging – if CEOs don’t adapt to this fast-changing world, the consequences will impact all aspects of the business in any company, including their business model. In fact, business velocity has never been this fast, and CEOs need to take care of some essential aspects in order to succeed in the next decade.

Culture of Innovation

A McKinsey report revealed that culture is the number one obstacle to the digital effectiveness of any company. The older the company is, the more likely it is to be stuck with policies, procedures, layers of management, and risk averseness – the so-called “corporate cholesterol”.In light of this, CEOs need to bring more diverse thinking and team collaborations across the organisation. They have to create an environment that encourages creativity and innovation – IT engineers are now involved in different parts of the business, and the boundaries of professions are now fading to allow for a culture of innovation, which is penetrating the core of every business.

Transformation of productivity and smart machines

 Typically, digital advancements will result in a productivity increase of ten to 30 percent, and this is expected to continue in a more structured way going forward, with productivity growth of two to three percent annually. It is also proven that combining emerging technologies with existing ones leads to significant productivity boost and reduced cost.

To make the most of this, CEOs need to keenly identify the business areas and scenarios that need a productivity boost – once identified it will be easier to decide the solutions or technologies to use to increase such productivity.Recent studies indicate that smart machines are getting smarter and more universal, not only for completing tasks previously reserved for humans, but also to complete what was thought to be impossible even for machines.

By the end of the next decade, companies will start to increase the functions of smart machines, software, apps. Employees will be able to develop personal toolkits of virtual twins with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as software and devices that are more accessible to their personal or team-based activities. This will require CEOs to carefully balance their business between people and technology.

The world of data

At present, there is an increased clatter on data analytics, data management and data governance in the business world. Currently only 15 to 25 percent of the organisations are using data properly for their decision making or business understanding purposes. Data has become the business rather than a by-product of the business – it has crossed all the borders of both small business and big corporations.

An organisation’s data is available from each part of the business, from the reception desk, to accounting and finance, as well as CRM, IT Helpdesk, logistics, social media. Organisations need to combine all their data to have full visualisation and understand all key matters of the business – this will enable them to make logical and timely decisions.

Every business line, function and touchpoint in an organisation can be enabled for data collection with the help of AI,in order to quickly and intelligently process it in a meaningful form. Another aspect CEOs need to consider when handling data is privacy and ownership of data.

Organisations need to respect the local regulatory controls and law applicable to their company. When approaching the organisation’s data and planning to implement some tools, CEOs need to consider the following aspects as a minimum: visibility, flexibility, adaptability, and scaling.

HLB HAMT have extensive global expertise in data analytics and automation and employ many data scientists and solution experts to assist our vast clientele.