Swedish companies and organizations are increasingly exposed to global competition, and it is also happening on the home front. How do our leaders need to develop to meet this?
That is a big question that naturally has many answers. One is that both leaders and organizations must have a strong future focus based on the fact that rapid changes are normal and will constantly bring both new opportunities and challenges.
The ability to question the current direction, quickly re-evaluate and perhaps even scrap what felt like a stable path forward last week in order to change course and implement a completely new idea will be important for companies to survive in a global context. Then you can't do the right thing every time, but the speed of the changes will be a decisive factor.
The leaders of the future have worked thoroughly on their personal development in order to be able to stand genuinely grounded and secure in a world where everything is changing. They need to be comfortable constantly trying new approaches without being able to lean on their own or others' experience and instead have the courage to try and correct the new along the way.
Does our school system support the development of future leaders and employees?
I'm not so sure. The school has the complex task of educating for a time that does not look like the one we have now. A large part of our professions disappear, new ones are added 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 acquire more skills from school. Knowledge is naturally central even in the future, but it, unlike the abilities, can be supplemented on demand in various ways. On the other hand, we need to develop empathetic, secure people with good self-esteem who are good at creating close relationships, collaborating, thinking laterally, solving problems and seeking and critically assessing information from childhood and adolescence. We need to succeed better there than today because it provides the important prerequisites for leading both 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, in a time when the environment was more predictable. But it is a few years old now and is far too slow-moving in change.
Today, self-organizing companies are growing 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 take market share from more traditional players.

The concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) was created about 15 years ago. Is it more relevant today?
The idea that companies take responsibility for how they affect society environmentally, economically and socially from a sustainability perspective is very much alive. Previously, it was often about how companies could optimize their shareholder benefit through social benefit for profit at both ends. But today, many more expect those we buy from or work for to have a higher purpose and take a responsibility that is much more far-reaching than keeping shareholders happy.
In the Harward Business Review, a survey was presented where 90% of those who responded could imagine a lower salary if they had the opportunity to work but something that they experienced as meaningful. Perhaps because today there is a widespread awareness of the earth's finite resources, of climate impact and increased polarization. I experience a greater desire to seriously find a higher purpose and tackle the big issues today. Perhaps the pandemic and Greta Thunberg have in different ways contributed to increasing the sense of urgency, but we are also beginning to see for ourselves the effects of these issues not being in sufficient focus before.
Meeting consumers' and employees' desire for sustainable action is increasingly important even from a competitive perspective. 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 absolutely be about a choice for environmental, economic and social sustainability. Here I think we are wise to listen to our millennials who generally take a stronger stand on these issues.