The manager’s loneliness in the face of current events
A sense of self-confidence enables you not to feel lost, to answer questions, to make choices, to make mistakes and to start again
If you ask ChatGPT what skills the managers of the future should have, it lists twelve. They are all more or less spot on, though none are particularly innovative.
If an aspiring manager were to ask the same question to their trusted headhunter, the answer would be more or less the same; with perhaps not twelve, but at least six skills that overlap with those identified by the AI. All valid, common-sense answers, but ones which, on their own, risk being insufficient. Not because the sources lack authority, but because today the unpredictability of economic, social and geopolitical events has stripped the future of that magic which people have always placed in its construction, resulting in an unpleasant shift from dream to resignation.
Worn down by pervasive uncertainty, there is a risk of falling into a state of inaction when the answers to one’s questions fail to instil a sense of hope for the future. And this is largely due to the fact that, in the current climate, anticipating future market developments is a highly complex undertaking. It is far more so than in the past, when managers received constructive career advice from expert consultants. Whether it was the right time to change companies, when it was advisable to diversify into a different sector, whether to seize the opportunity for an experience abroad, when to move from a managerial role to an entrepreneurial venture, and so on.
Uncertain as to how to proceed, managers are swept up in the current process of global change, aware that they are part of an epoch-making transformation, one that is dangerously characterised by a lack of direction. Torn away from their starting point, they now lack any clarity about their destination – and therefore about the path to follow. This creates an extremely challenging experience even for seasoned managers, who have spent their professional careers specialising in change management.
It is worrying to see that the leading figures of the most disruptive transformation – the technological one – are driving constant shifts in the landscape and contradictions. Take Sam Altman, for example, who, over the course of a few months, has alternated between pessimistic and more optimistic views regarding the impact of AI on employment. This highlights that the greatest danger today may not lie in the technologies themselves, but in the capabilities of those who govern and regulate them. Consequently, in a general sense, a worrying mistrust of current world leaders is growing, particularly as we see those in power who, feigning fearlessness, arrogantly and thoughtlessly instigate conflicts that they then have no idea how to resolve.
